“Cycling isn’t mathematics,” Alberto Contador said after crossing the line in Aprica, and he wasn’t wrong, certainly not after a stage so enthralling that the extension of his overall lead at this Giro d’Italia to more than four minutes felt like something of an afterthought. “These are the kind of stages that people remember.”
Stalled by a puncture shortly after passing through the finish line at Aprica for the first time, Contador was forced into a frantic chase as Katusha and Astana pushed the pace up front, and he had to claw his way back up to the leaders alone on the mighty Mortirolo. Once that remontada was complete, Contador then dropped Fabio Aru (Astana) six kilometres shy of the summit, only to be in turn distanced by the Sardinian’s teammate Mikel Landa on the final climb the finish.
“It was a very complicated stage,” Contador said with some understatement. “I punctured on the descent but until then it had been a perfect day. [Ivan] Basso gave me his wheel but it took a while to change. The whole team put in a huge effort to help me, my pulse was hitting 180 on the flat. They were riding full-on up front, and I knew then it would be a hard day.”
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This Giro had appeared to be petering out to a predictable conclusion after a weekend that saw Contador put daylight into Aru at the top of the overall standing but, like Alex Ferguson’s Manchester United teams, the Spaniard never seems content to do things the easy way.
Curiously, Contador’s mechanical problem on the descent from Aprica was not reported on race radio, and he chose to accept a wheel from Basso rather than change his bike altogether. By the time he re-entered the fray, Contador was over a minute down on a leading group that was being driven by the Katusha and Astana squads. While Katusha directeur sportif Dimitri Konyshev pleaded ignorance of Contador’s plight, Landa later suggested that his team had looked to take advantage of the situation.
“When I saw Astana were on the front, I knew that I’d start the Mortirolo with a deficit,” Contador said. “The deficit itself wasn’t the problem so much as having to ride flat out for 10 kilometres before the climb. On the Mortirolo, I rode at my own rhythm. I treated it like a time trial. I never lost my composure.”
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