Contador
Clenbuterol appeals aside… this guy is a pretty good bike racer and he’s on phenomenal form right now. This certainly isn’t the guy we saw struggling to stay on Andy Schleck’s wheel last year at the Tour de France. Contador is at his attacking, aggressive best at this race and when he’s like that it’s really pretty tough to beat him. It also seems like he’s been unleashed completely in this race. It looks like he’s basically free to attack at will, which makes him even tougher to deal with than he was in the Discovery/Astana days where he was being kept on a tighter leash. With so much climbing remaining he could push his final margin to over 5:00 minutes without much effort.
Nibali
Nibali has shown himself to be a rider of real quality. He’s not quite the climber he would need to be to take a climb-heavy corsa rosa like this one, but he’s definitely got more grand tour victories in his future. A course like the one DiLuca won in 2007 or the one Menchov won in 2009 would be more within his reach right now.
For the most part he’s ridden solidly, intelligently and has played the race as well as he can tactically against the power of someone like Contador. Here’s hoping a couple more years of development and a course more suited to his particular talents will lead the Shark of the Strait to his own Giro victory.
Today especially showed well for him. He attacked when it was appropriate and when that failed he rode within himself to limit the damage as much as possible. While he did drop some time, he’s still on the podium. It could have been much worse.
Cavendish
Does any active cyclist gather up more controversy than Cavendish? This week he dealt with accusations of being dragged up Etna and being called “fat” by Cipollini and answered by… winning two stages back to back. Not a bad way to answer critics 🙂
Crostis
After all is said and done, I’m happy they pulled the climb out of the race. Watching the videos and looking at some photos it was clearly a brutal, dangerous descent and it really had no place in a pro bike race. This is especially true in light of Wouter Weylandt’s tragic accident.
Euskatel
I was happy to see the Basque team win back-to-back stages. They animate the high mountains of every Grand Tour so it’s nice to see them get some results. Anton’s win, especially, was a classy victory for the squad.
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