Britain’s Mark Cavendish would be forgiven for harboring secret dreams of being crowned champion of the season’s first major one-day classic at Milan-San Remo today.
Though the normally ambitious Columbia team are keeping their real hopes for Cavendish in the 298km Italian epic under wraps, it could be argued that circumstances should allow the Manxman to dream on.
For starters, normally unstoppable Swiss tough man Fabian Cancellara — Saxo Bank’s defending champion — has pulled out with an infection.
PHOTO: EPA
Cancellara sprung the sprinters’ trap last year by pulling off the front with 2km to go and setting an unassailable pace all the way to the San Remo finish line, where Filippo Pozatto finished four seconds behind.
Two-time Milan-San Remo champion Oscar Freire of Spain has also been forced out because he is still nursing injuries suffered in a crash while racing in last month’s Tour of California.
Another world champion, Alessandro Ballan, has also upset his team’s plans although the Lampre rider, arguably, was not among the top five favorites for the race known as “La Primavera.”
Last year’s rainbow jersey winner pulled out of last week’s Tirreno-Adriatico and has been ordered to rest for two to three weeks — time that he would have spent honing his form for more realistic goals at the Tour of Flanders and Paris Roubaix.
Cavendish’s best chances of claiming what would only be Britain’s second win in Milan-San Remo — after the 1964 triumph of Tom Simpson — would be for the race to end with a bunch sprint.
After tackling the Tre Capi — a series of three big climbs — nerves will jangle by the time the peloton hits the 5.6km long Cipressa climb 27km from the finish.
It is Cavendish’s first participation and Columbia, understandably, are keen not to heap on the pressure.
“If he’s there in the front group after the [final climb of] Poggio, then of course the team will back him up 100 percent for the sprint,” sports director Valerio Piva said. “But if he’s not up there, it’s not the end of the world. This is his first San Remo and his main objective to get the experience of racing it.”
However, the temptation not to think big — and put everything into getting Cavendish to the front of the bunch after the Cipressa — must be preying on Columbia’s minds.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier