Cancellara confirms

Both Paris-Nice and Tirreno-Adriatico are done and dusted, with respectively Rebellin and Cancellara taking overall honours. From CN: Italian Francesco Chicchi won the final stage of the 43rd Tirreno-Adriatico, 176 kilometres starting and ending in San Benedetto del Tronto. The 27 year-old of Team Liquigas out-sprinted Italy's Danilo Napolitano (Lampre) and Great Britain's Mark Cavendish (High Road) to win on the seaside roads. Team CSC controlled the day to ensure Fabian Cancellara kept the overall leader's maglia azzurra, which he gained two days ago after winning the time trial. The Swiss, who today celebrated his 27th birthday, won the race with 16 seconds over Italian Enrico Gasparotto (Barloworld).

Just to look at the sprinters for a moment, in this last stage of T-A Robbie McEwen looked to run out of puff in the sprint - perhaps just went a tad too early. Petacchi didn't seem to try at all, and Cavendish was lost without his team-mates (they crashed) but recovered. Zabel was there, just, and Cooke was close by. The top 12 results looked like this:
1 Francesco Chicchi (Ita) Liquigas 4.50.50 (36,309 km/h)
2 Danilo Napolitano (Ita) Lampre
3 Mark Cavendish (GBr) Team High Road
4 Robbie McEwen (Aus) Silence - Lotto
5 Danilo Hondo (Ita) Serramenti PVC Diquigiovanni-Androni Giocattoli
6 Ariel Maximiliano Richeze (Arg) CSF Group Navigare
7 Alexandre Usov (Blr) AG2r - La Mondiale
8 Jose Joaquin Rojas Gil (Spa) Caisse d'Epargne
9 Erik Zabel (Ger) Team Milram
10 Baden Cooke (Aus) Barloworld
11 Mickael Delage (Fra) Française des Jeux
12 Christopher Sutton (Aus) Slipstream Chipotle Presented By H30

It's a long way to go before July, but it'll rattle along soon enough. Well before then we'll see who is firing at San Remo, won't we... Freire or Petacchi? Bettini or Di Luca?

Cancellara and Freire on form

Back to Tirreno-Adriatico and Freire has the form to win a hill-climb sprint, whilst Cancellara has the power and fitness to recover from yesterday's TT win and hang with the sprinters (a bit like last year's TdF) and defend his lead on GC.

From CN:Luis Felipe Laverde (CSF Group Navigare) chased behind the trio at 10 seconds. He was caught by the Liquigas and LPR led gruppo, where Daniele Pietropolli and Paolo Savoldelli pushed the rhythm for 'The Killer.' Gasparotto fired his missile at 1300 metres remaining. The Italian, clad in the maglia ciclamino of points leader, was solo before Cancellara closed the door to protect his GC lead. Di Luca led through the last curve and 'Pippo' Pozzato was able to come around, but on the back of the two Italians was Oscar the Cat. The Spaniard used the last 25 metres to take victory and put his name at the top of the list of Sanremo favourites.

Other sprinters like McEwen and Cavendish were over 11 minutes back - obviously not targeting this hill-top sprint.

Freire "hard to catch" at T-A

As usual, Oscar Freire takes a win he wasn't confident of, and wasn't expected to take. We know he'll be there, we know he'll be a contender, but the likes of Petacchi and McEwen will have either (a) more power for longer or (b) more acceleration. Well it looked like McEwen would nail it through the last corner but it was just too far to the line; and yet too short for Petacchi to wind it up. So Oscar launched, gapped and won. That's stage 1, Tirreno-Adriatico.

The top 20 on the stage and on GC:
1 Oscar Freire Gomez (Spa) Rabobank 4.09.51
2 Alessandro Petacchi (Ita) Team Milram 0.04
3 Jose Joaquin Rojas Gil (Spa) Caisse d'Epargne 0.06
4 Mikhail Ignatiev (Rus) Tinkoff Credit Systems 0.07
5 Yuriy Krivtsov (Ukr) AG2r - La Mondiale 0.08
6 Markus Fothen (Ger) Gerolsteiner 0.09
7 Erik Zabel (Ger) Team Milram 0.10
8 Baden Cooke (Aus) Barloworld
9 Sébastien Chavanel (Fra) Française des Jeux
10 Gerald Ciolek (Ger) Team High Road
11 Robbie McEwen (Aus) Silence - Lotto
12 Matti Breschel (Den) Team CSC
13 Tiziano dall'Antonia (Ita) CSF Group Navigare
14 Ruben Perez Moreno (Spa) Euskaltel - Euskadi
15 Murilo Fischer (Bra) Liquigas
16 Francesco Chicchi (Ita) Liquigas
17 Christopher Sutton (Aus) Slipstream Chipotle Presented By H30
18 Pedro Horrillo Munoz (Spa) Rabobank
19 Heinrich Haussler (Ger) Gerolsteiner
20 Danilo Hondo (Ita) Serramenti PVC Diquigiovanni-Androni Giocattoli
That's 4 Aussies in the sprint, if you count Haussler.

Early days, yet...

It's only March, nowhere near July, yet... I can't help but speculate on form.

Let's look at the Paris Nice final GC:
1 Alberto Contador (Spa) Discovery Channel 29.55.22
2 Davide Rebellin (Ita) Gerolsteiner 0.26
3 Luis León Sánchez (Spa) Caisse d'Epargne 0.42
4 Tadej Valjavec (Slo) Lampre-Fondital 0.49
5 Franco Pellizotti (Ita) Liquigas 0.57
6 David López García (Spa) Caisse d'Epargne 1.00
7 Cadel Evans (Aus) Predictor-Lotto 1.01
8 Fränk Schleck (Lux) Team CSC 1.08
9 Samuel Sánchez (Spa) Euskaltel-Euskadi 1.12
10 Joaquím Rodríguez (Spa) Caisse d'Epargne 1.22
11 Alexandre Botcharov (Rus) Crédit Agricole 1.29
12 Sébastien Joly (Fra) Française Des Jeux 1.36
13 David Millar (GBr) Saunier Duval-Prodir 1.46
14 Jérôme Pineau (Fra) Bouygues Telecom
15 Patxi Vila (Spa) Lampre-Fondital 2.10

What can we say? Disco look strong, with multiple stage winners on song and not only several GC contenders but a GC winner as well. Hmmm. Too early in the season, or just demonstrating their options for July?

Evans looks strong in what must be just his first race of the year (is it?). Great work in the mountains and 7th overall. Hmmmm. Without really trying? Schleck also looks ominously good for similar reasons, as does Millar for that matter.

Contador is obviously flying, and Disco clearly have some stars that can pace themselves throughout the season. Rebellin is getting back to the form we know he can achieve, so expect a big result soon. Ahhh, so easy to speculate, so hard to do.


CN reports on Paris-Nice here and BTW Pez has a nice set of pics on that similarly important form-guide, Tirreno Adriatico.

Nice win for McEwen at Tirreno-Adriatico

A short sprint out of a corner on a tight finishing straight... does that sound like McEwen country? Sure was. CN report here.