British sprint king Mark Cavendish claimed his first victory of the centenary Giro d’Italia on Sunday to hand his dominant Columbia team their fourth win of the race.
Cavendish’s win followed hours of controversy that left race director Angelo Zomegnan fuming after the entire peloton stopped in their tracks six laps from the end to make a protest about unsatisfactory safety measures.
Zomegnan agreed, reluctantly, that the times from the stage would not count toward the race’s general classification.
PHOTO: EPA
Italian Danilo Di Luca thus retained the race leader’s pink jersey with his 13 second lead on Sweden’s Thomas Lovkvist intact.
Controversy hit Sunday’s stage before the halfway mark when, after riding at a relatively slow speed of 33kph, the entire bunch stopped with six of the 10 laps to finish to publicize their protest.
Di Luca, of the LPR team, read out a statement apologizing to the public, but explaining that the riders were unsatisfied with safety measures.
“For myself and a lot of other riders, the circuit was dangerous,” said the Italian, who admitted the decision had caused a split in the peloton. “At the start we asked for, and got, a neutralization of the times and for that I thank the organizers. But the sprinters weren’t happy, that’s why we stopped to explain things to the public.”
The peloton resumed riding minutes later, but continued at the same, slow pace until the closing stages when the pace slowly wound up to something resembling racing over the last four laps.
Meanwhile, Spanish cyclist Pedro Horrillo was brought out of an artificially induced coma on Sunday, the day after he sustained serious injuries in a crash, race organizers said.
The 34-year-old crashed into a ravine on the descent of the Culmine di San Pietro mountain about 70km into the 209km eighth stage and was airlifted to hospital in Bergamo.
Horrillo sustained fractures to his thigh bone, knee and neck and had difficulty in breathing properly.
A sumo star was born in Japan on Sunday when 24-year-old Takerufuji became the first wrestler in 110 years to win a top-division tournament on his debut, triumphing at the 15-day Spring Grand Sumo Tournament in Osaka despite injuring his ankle on the penultimate day. Takerufuji, whose injury had left him in a wheelchair outside the ring, shoved out the higher-ranked Gonoyama at the Edion Arena Osaka to the delight of the crowd, giving him an unassailable record of 13 wins and two losses to claim the Emperor’s Cup. “I did it just through willpower. I didn’t really know what was going
The US’ Ilia Malinin on Saturday produced six scintillating quadruple jumps, including a quadruple Axel, in the men’s free skate to capture his first figure skating world title. The 19-year-old nicknamed the “Quad god,” who is the only skater to land a quadruple Axel in competition, dazzled with an array of breathtakingly executed jumps starting with his quad Axel and including a quadruple Lutz in combination with a triple flip and a quadruple toe loop in combination with a triple toe. He added an unexpected triple-triple combination at the end to earn a world-record 227.79 in the free program for a championship
Shohei Ohtani’s interpreter is being criminally investigated by the IRS, and the attorney for his alleged bookmaker said Thursday that the ex-Los Angeles Dodgers employee placed bets on international soccer — but not baseball. The IRS confirmed Thursday that interpreter Ippei Mizuhara and Mathew Bowyer, the alleged illegal bookmaker, are under criminal investigation through the agency’s Los Angeles Field Office. IRS Criminal Investigation spokesperson Scott Villiard said he could not provide additional details. Mizuhara, 39, was fired by the Dodgers on Wednesday following reports from the Los Angeles Times and ESPN about his alleged ties to an illegal bookmaker and debts well
MLB on Friday announced a formal investigation into the scandal swirling around Shohei Ohtani and his former interpreter amid charges that the Los Angeles Dodgers superstar was the victim of “massive theft.” The Dodgers on Wednesday fired Ippei Mizuhara, Ohtani’s long-time interpreter and close friend, after Ohtani’s representatives alleged that the Japanese two-way star had been the victim of theft, which was reported to involve millions of dollars and link Mizuhara to a suspected illegal bookmaker in California. “Major League Baseball has been gathering information since we learned about the allegations involving Shohei Ohtani and Ippei Mizuhara from the news media,” MLB