Australian rider Ben O’Connor on Wednesday won the Giro d’Italia’s 17th stage in the ski resort of Madonna di Campiglio in the northern Italian Dolomites, a day before the final big climb of this year’s race towards the Stelvio Pass.
Portugal’s Joao Almeida of Deceuninck-QuickStep finished in 15th position, five minutes behind O’Connor, to maintain his hold on the overall leader’s pink jersey.
To win in Milan on Sunday, Almeida must resist one of the highest peaks in Europe at an altitude of 2,758m, with a freezing descent and final ascent to the lakes of Cancano.
Photo: EPA-EFE
“Today it was a hard day, a lot of climbing, but I had the perfect team with me,” Almeida, 22, said.
“That’s one more day in the Maglia Rosa. Team Sunweb tried to attack, but I was feeling good. Tomorrow it’s another day, I look forward to it,” he added.
Almeida holds a 17-second overall lead on Dutch rider Wilco Kelderman whose Team Sunweb teammate Jai Hindley of Australia is third at nearly three minutes.
O’Connor, riding for the NTT Pro Cycling team, attacked on the final climb of the 203km run through a snowy backdrop from Bassano del Grappa.
The 24-year-old, who finished second on Tuesday, crossed the line alone, 31 seconds ahead of Austrian Hermann Pernsteiner of Team Bahrain McLaren with Belgian Thomas de Gendt third a minute behind the leader.
“Yesterday’s second place left me feeling pretty bitter,” said O’Connor, who had finished behind Pernsteiner’s Slovenian teammate Jan Tratnik.
“Today I was able to bounce back and get this success, it’s a dream to get a victory in a Grand Tour,” he said.
A breakaway of 19 riders led the way in a stage that included four climbs, with the remaining group going into the final 12.5km climb with a lead of six minutes.
O’Connor pulled clear with 8.8km to go ahead of a trio of pursuers including De Gendt, Pernsteiner and Ilnur Zakarin.
Pernsteiner tried vainly to catch up with the Australian, but lost time on the climb toward Madonna di Campiglio.
O’Connor had won a mountain stage on the Tour des Alpes in 2018, but it was his first stage win on a Grand Tour.
Yesterday’s 18th stage was to feature the final big mountain climb in this year’s race after it was announced that tomorrow’s penultimate stage would not cross the border into France because of COVID-19 restrictions.
The 20th stage had been set to feature two Alpine climbs, Agnel and Izoard. The alternative route would be less mountainous with a double climb toward Sestriere at the end of the stage.
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