Frenchman Nacer Bouhanni sprinted to victory in the 10th stage of the Giro d’Italia on Tuesday after a mainly flat 173km run that started in Modena and finished in Salsomaggiore Terme, Italy.
It was the third stage win of the race for the Francaise des Jeux rider, who again held off Italian Giacomo Nizzolo of Trek Factory Racing in a repeat of his two previous stage triumphs.
Australian Michael Matthews of Orica-GreenEDGE came home third in a mass sprint as compatriot Cadel Evans of BMC Racing Team retained the overall leader’s pink jersey.
Photo: EPA
Following Monday’s rest day, Bouhanni triumphed for the third time in eight days as a mass pile-up with 700m to go played havoc with the peloton racing for home.
“It’s never easy,” said the French champion, who solidified his position as points leader and holder of the red jersey with Tuesday’s win.
“It was pretty fast in the final sprint. Nizzolo attacked, but I was able to go past him,” added the 23-year-old, who equalled compatriot Laurent Jalabert’s haul of three stage wins on the 1999 Giro.
Photo: AFP
Under sunny skies, Italian duo Andrea Fedi of Neri Sottoli and Marco Bandiera of Androni Giocattoli-Venezuela launched an escape in the early stages that was doomed from the outset.
Their maximum lead reached 8 minutes, 30 seconds before the peloton swept them up with 9km left to set up a mass sprint for the line.
Evans maintained his 57 second-lead over Colombian Rigoberto Uran of Omega Pharma-Quick Step as both riders came home with the pack.
Photo: AFP
However, the 2011 Tour de France winner lost one of his teammates when Belgian Yannick Eijssen fell victim to a crash in the last hour of the stage. BMC later confirmed that Eijssen is out of the race, even if X-rays showed he did not break any bones.
“We only hear these things on the radio, we don’t know what happens, and I only saw the images on TV after the race at the finish,” Evans said of his colleague’s crash. “To see a neck brace on anyone is scary — they say it’s only a precautionary measure — but of course we miss one teammate. It’s a big blow as well to us as a team.”
Evans will hope to increase his overall lead in today’s 41.9km individual time trial, but had to first negotiate yesterday’s 11th stage, a 249km run from Collecchio, near Parma, to Savona that features a category-two climb before a descent to the finish.
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