Barring a crash in yesterday’s final stage, Alberto Contador was poised to win the Giro d’Italia after the Spaniard limited the damage on the 20th stage, a punishing 199km trek from Saint-Vincent to Sestriere on Saturday.
The Tinkoff-Saxo rider, lost touch with his main rivals in the penultimate climb up the narrow roads to the Colle delle Finestre, but retained the overall leader’s pink jersey.
At the end of the final ascent to Sestriere, Contador was sixth, 2 minutes, 26 seconds behind stage winner Fabio Aru of Italy, who is second overall, 2 minutes, 2 seconds behind with only one flat stage left to Milan.
Photo: AFP
“I wasn’t feeling good, probably because of the accumulated effort, but I knew I had a good cushion in the general classification and, even though there were plenty of kilometers to go before the finish, I preferred to ride at my rhythm,” Contador told reporters.
“There was never a moment when I thought the jersey was in danger. I maintained my calm because I knew that the difference in speeds between the groups was going to be small,” he said.
“This Giro d’Italia is in the bag now, with just tomorrow’s [Sunday’s] stage to come, so I’m already thinking of my next target,” he added.
Contador is looking to become the first rider to achieve a rare Giro-Tour de France double since Marco Pantani in 1998.
On Saturday, Aru jumped away from a small leading group with just under 2km left and did not look back, claiming his second stage win in as many days.
Canadian Ryder Hesjedal of Cannondale-Garmin was second, 18 seconds behind, and Colombian Rigoberto Uran finished third, 24 seconds off the pace.
Spain’s Mikel Landa, Aru’s Astana teammate, who looked the strongest rider in the field in the climb to Colle delle Finestre, remained third overall, 3 minutes, 14 seconds behind Contador.
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