Tony Martin of HTC-Highroad has won the final stage of the Tour of the Basque Country (the 24k Time Trial) to rack up his fifth win of the season; clocking a time of 32:15. He beat Andreas (RadioShack) into second place on + 0:05 but the Germany’s overall time of 22:12:11 was more than enough to give him a final General Classification win for the Tour. Klöden’s team mate Chris Horner took second overall place (+ 0:47), with Robert Gesink of Rabobank third.
With the kind of all-powering sprint finish that shows his superstar potential HTC-Highroad’s Mark Cavendish yesterday (Wednesday 6) took first place at the Scheldeprijs Classic. Despite having missed out for the last two years, this victory marks the Brit’s third win at the Belgium event – he took his first pro victory here in 2007, repeating his success in 2008 – and he now equals Piet Oellibrandt’s record number of wins for Scheldeprijs. It also sees Cavendish’s second win of the season after a similarly spectacular sprint finish at the Tour of Oman to beat out Denis Galimzyanov and Andrea Guardini in a time of 3:39:58. The Scheldeprijs Classic must have felt like déjà vu to Russian Galimzyanov (Katusha Team), with Cavendish yet again holding him off for second place.
A number of spectacular crashes have defined the race in recent years and Cavendish, to take nothing away from his success, was certainly helped out here this year with a wipe-out close to the finish that ended defending champion Tyler Farrar’s chances of success for Garmin-Cervélo.
With typically British reserve Cavendish summed up his victory with the understated: “I’m racing a lot this season and I’ve had some bad luck, so it’s good I can get the wins in too…My next race will be Paris-Roubaix and then I’ll build up for the Tour de France, with the Tour of Italy and the Tour de Suisse before then as well.”
Continuing his string of successes this season Tasmanian Matthew Goss (HTC-Highroad) has won this year’s classic Milan–San Remo in a time of 6:51:10, beating World Time Trial champion and 2008 Milan–San Remo winner Fabian Cancellara (Leopard Trek) in to second and Omega Pharma-Lotto’s Philippe Gilbert in to third. Reigning champion Óscar Freire (Rabobank), who also holds wins for the 2004 and 2007 edition, came badly unstuck early with rear wheel problems that lost the kind of valuable time that was never going to see him regain pace for a fourth win.
The first Milan- San Remo was held in 1907 organised by Italian sports newspaper La Gazzetta dello Sport at a time when it wasn’t known if the course was physically possible (1905 Tour of Lombardy winner Giovanni Gerbi was sent out to test it.) It became an almost instant favourite and has been held yearly – with the exception of 1916, 1944 and 1945 war years – ever since. Italy holds the record for most victories on the course with 50, whilst legendary rider Eddy Merckx still maintains his record number of wins with 7 (1966 & ‘67,1969,1971 & ‘72,1975 and his last in ‘76).
Full results available here: www.uciprotour.com