Milan-San Remo round-up
Euskaltel added colour to yesterday's Milan-San Remo through active riding right from the off.
Juan José Oroz, seemingly always adept in the Monuments, spent large portions of the day up ahead in the main break alongside eight other riders. The nine got away after approximately 20 clicks and were only reeled in with 40 to go. Oroz holds the distinction of being the sole professional cyclist between October 2007 and April 2008 to have finished all five Monuments, and made his mark on the big stage once again with a combative display. For the record though, he failed to finish the race.
Egoi Martínez and Gorka Verdugo both had strong rides to finish in the first main chase group 20 seconds in arrears, in 34th and 37th respectively. The former, who lost a Tour de France stage win in 2008 to yesterday's winner Gerrans after an alleged broken promise, and the latter looked strong on the Cipressa, but weren't able to stay with the very strongest over the Poggio.
The crash that took Philippe Gilbert out of contention with 22 kilometres left to ride also saw an Euskaltel rider hit the deck. It was hard to identify the Euskatel man, but it did look like Jon Izagirre. More on that later.
- (1, Simon Gerrans, GreenEdge)
- 34, Egoi Martínez, 0:20
- 37, Gorka Verdugo, s.t.
- 85, Jon Izagirre, 7:43
- 132, Pablo Urtasun, 20:18
- 133, Mikel Landa, s.t.
- 134, Rubén Pérez, s.t.
2 comments:
The man who crashed on the cipressa was Izagirre. I watched him the whole race and he acted really strong and attentive, too bad he could have finished top 15 at least. He's the big revelation this year, but it's also sad this very young guy seems their strongest rider at the moment.
You mention that Tour stage with Egoi and Gerrans, what about a broken promise? I remember that day clearly, it was the stage Oscar Perreiro had that terrible crash, the peleton was that shocked they gave the lead group 10 minutes. On the last climb he attacked and drove all the time 10 seconds before Gerrans, unfortunately Gerrans beated him the very last km.
Madariaga, and various others, said post-race that Gerrans had told Martínez that he was completely empty and that he wouldn't go for the stage-win if Martínez let him stay on his wheel. Gerrans was supposedly saying a top result on the stage was enough for him. Then he outsprints him with 100 metres to go. Not very cool
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