Well, That Portugueuse Costa was certainly not the strongest rider out there yesterday, but he was the smartest in yesterday's World Championship race, that was run under terible weather conditions in Tuscanny (Florence), except for the last half-hour
Many of the faves either fell (Nibali twice, Sagan, Contador, Evans) or had technical problems at the wrong time (Gilbert, Cancellara), but the final five (including Uran with that spectacular fall) were the better ones...
With Colombian Uran eliminated, and Nibali a bit scared (after two falls), it looked like the Spanish team had all the right cards in their hands, especially that Valverde was the quickedt at the sprint - in case it came down to that... So logically, Rodriguez attacked three times, forcing Nibali to ride after him, but he did it once too much (the fourth), thus blocking Valverde, tactically obliged to "cover" Nibali... And only Rui Costa (Tour de Switzerland and two TdF stages victories) was able to jump back at catch Rodriguez with 3/4 km left (Valverde could not do it, because he would've brought Nibali back)... He had not pedalled an extra strojke until 3km from the finish was was still fresh (relative to the 270 km length)... But Rodriguez, despite being "spent" almost managed to win the sprint...
I still think Valverde (easily beating Nibal at the sprint for third place) and Nibali were the stronger riders, but the first got caught in team tactics and the other fell twice.
Sagan, Cancellara and Gilbert (along with a few other riders) finished some 20 seconds behind, but they were tactically eliminated at the top of the hill (were they were 35 seconds behind...
=================
Two more big one-day races left:
Paris-Tours (generally for sprinters) and Lombardy Tour (generally for riders that were on top yesterday
Bookmarks