Action today! Big break (that got clear!), lots of abandons, attacks and a change in leaders. Savoldelli managed not to bust out on a hot decent and instead flew away on his own coming up the other side while Basso floundered in his wake. Up the road, Ivan Parra took the stage, and made it three wins from non-ProTour Teams in 13 stages. Nice efforts today from Lampre. As I saw it, it was Simoni’s attack (launched by Cunego) that cracked Basso; it’s hard to tell though, since OLN decided that running a “CYCLISM II” ad right as Simoni went would be good journalism.
Beloki, Garzelli, Kirsipuu, Cooke, O’Grady and McEwen all bailed today, as did Ryder Hesjedal. Basso got run ragged, but still only found himself down 50 seconds at the end of the day. DiLuca continued to ride ridiculous in the white kit of the UCI ProTour, three seconds further down. After that the drop is more than two minutes to 4th-placed Simoni. Bettini, despite getting his cricket-ass dropped on the second-to-last climb of the day, looks to inherit the points jersey thanks to today’s spinters’ exodus.