Contador's powers of recovery, Team Sky's new tactics, plus more...
Tuesday 19 May 2015 13:44, UK
The first week of the Giro d’Italia provided plenty of thrills and spills and ended with Alberto Contador holding a three-second lead over Fabio Aru at the top of the general classification.
Here are five things we learnt…
No one but Contador himself can know how much pain his injury is causing him, but looking at his body language in the three stages he has raced since dislocating his left shoulder in a crash on stage six, he seems to be over the worst of it. Contador has an unmistakable style of climbing – out of the saddle, shoulders rolling – and he would surely be unable to do that if the dislocation was still a major problem.
Yes, he was grimacing plenty on stages eight and nine, but that looked to be more to do with the pain Astana were inflicting on his legs than it did his shoulder injury.
The biggest change in the Team Sky camp going into the Giro appeared to be the introduction of a motorhome for leader Richie Porte to sleep in every night rather than the team hotel, but the first nine stages revealed that the British squad have also adopted new tactics on the road.
They have traditionally led three-week races from the front, spending hour after hour at the head of the peloton in an attempt to control the race, but in this Giro they have barely spent a minute on the front, opting instead to let Tinkoff-Saxo and Astana battle it out for supremacy and ride their domestiques into a pulp. Porte also seems content for now to sit third overall, 22 seconds off the pink jersey, allowing Aru and Contador to attack each other while he sits in their slipstream and conserves strength.
It has been an aggressive first week but no one has shown more desire to go on the attack than Aru. Not only has the 24-year-old Italian regularly ordered his team to the front of the peloton to chase down breakaways or set a searing pace, but he has also frequently been the first out of the favourites to make a move on the mountain stages. The only exception was the first summit finish on stage five, when Contador made the opening attack, but Aru caught up with the Spaniard and wasted little time in launching a counter of his own.
Perhaps he is conscious of losing time on next Saturday’s time trial and is keen to distance Contador and Richie Porte in the mountains, but either way, the young pretender looks fit and ready for a fight. The only problem is, all of his efforts so far have gone unrewarded and despite help from the excellent Mikel Landa, he is yet to drop Contador or Porte.
The 59.4km time trial on stage 14 was always going to be crucial stage of the race, but with nothing separating Contador, Aru and Porte in the opening mountain stages, it is now fair to suggest that it will in all likelihood be decisive.
Over such a long distance, Aru in particular could lose more than three minutes to an accomplished time-trialist such as Porte, and the Australian might also take a sizeable chunk out of Contador. Whatever happens, it is unlikely that the trio will be anywhere near as closely matched as they have been on the climbs, so Saturday’s stage may well be the day the race is won and lost.
The 22-year-old Italian has been tipped as a future Giro winner by Ivan Basso and he proved why by claiming an impressive solo win on stage four.
The Cannondale-Garmin rider cunningly launched his stage-winning attack out of the day’s breakaway on the flat before the final ascent, proving that his tactical brain is as adept as his climbing legs.
