A long, steady, uphill dash for the line at Benevento on Wednesday netted André Greipel (Lotto-Soudal) the fourth Giro d'Italia victory of his career, continuing Greipel's unwritten personal tradition of taking least one stage win in every Grand Tour he has started since 2008.
After his first ever Grand Tour, the Vuelta a España in 2007 - where, although not winning, he still managed two fourth places behind Alessandro Petacchi on stage 11 and Daniele Bennati on stage 17 - Greipel then went on to win in Locarno on stage 17 of the 2008 Giro d'Italia. Since then, the stage victories have kept on coming.
At 33, his total Grand Tour tally of wins now stands at 18 and within that total Greipel's versatility is such that he has won everything from uphill sprints like Benevento - "I won one like that in Saint-Quentin in the [2012] Tour," Greipel recalled - to the much flatter challenges like the Champs Elysées last year in the Tour, and just about everything else in between.
ADVERTISEMENT
The first of the fast men to start his stage five Giro sprint after a very tricky and technical few corners in the closing kilometres, Greipel said later how he had performed when he raced around the 6.5 kilometre finishing circuit had considerably boosted his self-confidence for going for the win.
"The whole stage was quite hard, actually, there were 3,000 vertical metres of climbing. But we had planned before the stage that we really had to be the whole time in the top ten to stay out of trouble. We knew it was going to be hard, and the team did a really amazing job to keep me up there."
"Then when I crossed the finishing line for the first time, I thought ‘ok, this is not what I expected' and I still had some power in my legs. So I really believed in myself today."
- Giro d'Italia: Greipel wins stage 5
- Giro d’Italia stage 5: Finish line quotes
- Giro d’Italia stage 5 highlights – Video
You can read more at Cyclingnews.com
via Cyclingnews Latest News http://ift.tt/27epjkw
No comments:
Post a Comment