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.
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