Spaniard Alberto Contador took a massive step toward his second Giro d’Italia triumph by increasing his overall lead on Fabio Aru after an epic 16th stage, which was won by fellow Spaniard Mikel Landa on Tuesday.
Astana rider Landa made up for team leader Aru’s difficult day as he claimed his second win of the race, clinching the 174km ride from Pinzolo to Aprica in the Italian Dolomites, which took in no less than five categorized mountain passes, including the notoriously difficult Mortirolo.
In what proved to be another small humiliation for his team leader Aru, Landa came over the finish line in 5 hours, 2 minutes and 51seconds to move up to second place overall, 4 minutes, 2 seconds behind Contador, who settled for third place, 38 seconds behind on the wheel of Dutchman Steven Kruijswijk.
Photo: AFP
Aru finished nearly three minutes off the pace to drop to third, 4 minutes, 52 seconds behind Contador, raising further doubts about Astana’s leadership, with several mountain stages on the menu before Sunday’s final ride to Milan.
On what was billed as the “Queen” stage of the race, Contador emerged a step closer to his second pink jersey after Astana ultimately paid the price for attacking the Spaniard when he suffered a puncture on the descent of the Aprica, with a little over 60km remaining.
Astana and Katusha pounced on Contador’s misfortune to join forces and open up a gap, which soon left the Spanish race leader a minute down on the stage.
Astana had worked hard to increase their advantage by the start of the 11.8km climb to the summit. Contador was 50 seconds behind and, more worryingly for the Spaniard, totally on his own after losing his teammates.
Contador set about cutting his way through the stragglers dropped from the earlier front group. Although Aru was forging on with Landa and Kruiswijk, the Italian was soon to be left on his own, too.
Contador finally closed the gap 5km before the summit, prompting Landa to counter the Spaniard and leave his tiring team leader behind, alone and isolated, when Contador threatened to ride away solo.
By the summit, Contador, Landa and Kruijswijk held nearly a minute’s lead on Yuri Trofimov and Ryder Hesjedal, with Aru’s deficit now at nearly two minutes.
The gaps remained largely the same after the descent, with Aru suffering his own mechanical problem and requiring a change of bike before the long ride through the valley toward the foot of the final climb to Aprica.
Aru fought to limit the damage, but the grimaces on the Italian’s face spoke volumes. Up ahead of him, Landa pulled ahead of Contador and Kruijswijk in the final meters of the race to put a silver lining around Astana’s now seemingly doomed bid to top the race podium on Sunday.
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