G Izagirre top 20 in Suisse prologue
Euskaltel got of to a decent start in the Tour de Suisse today. Gorka Izagirre showed strength in the 7,3km prologue in Lugano, but the team's overall candidates were well in arrears.
Peter Sagan powered to a convincing win ahead of an, admittedly, below par Cancellara - the Swiss powerhouse is still easing his way back into competition after breaking his collarbone in Vlaanderen some months ago. Izagirre showed his Tour form is building up nicely with a 20th place, 25 seconds off the winning time. He ended up on the same time as Poels, Velits and Klöden, though, so he's got reason to feel content.
As for GC aspirants Astarloza, Nieve and Antón, it was an altogether different story. None of the three came within 40 seconds of Sagan's time and lost precious seconds to a number of general classification rivals.
Results (full results here):
- (1, Peter Sagan (Liquigas), 9:43
- 20, Gorka Izagirre, 0:25
- 59, Mikel Astarloza, 0:41
- 70, Mikel Nieve, 0:44
- 93, Igor Antón, 0:53
- 100, Pablo Urtasun, 0:55
- 106, Romain Sicard, 0:57
- 133, Rubén Pérez, 1:10
- 139, Iván Velasco, 1:13
Up tomorrow is a long day in the saddle - 218 clicks from Verbania to Verbier.
1 comment:
Izagirre seems to be on the right track for the Tour. I think he'll get a stage win from a breakaway in France next month, he doesn't want to be any worse than his younger brother..
Todays Verbier-stage will surely be interesting, I hope Nieve is fresh after the Giro, and considering his amount of race days this season it's not that unlikely. We saw Moreno, also a Giro-rider this year, taka a stage win in Dauphine a couple of days ago.
For Igor, surely this is just a race to get some kilometeres in his legs after he broke his clavicula..? Would be a major surprise for me if he gets in the mix today.
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