72 Volta a Portugal Bicicleta- em, 2.1 August 04-15 (Kash in !)

[Libertine Seguros]

Oh, if only it could go back to the full 2 weeks it used to have...

Barbosa was pretty ridiculous yesterday, Ribeiro was very impressive managing to still manage second despite three protests against Barbosa. Barbosa was furious, refusing to talk to the press or anything, just storming off.

Everybody on the road now, Marque still leading. He lost a bunch of seconds at the end of the stage with a chain problem too.

Edit: Gustavo Rodrigues (another Xacobeo guy) just went 5th, 31" behind Marque. Xacobeo now have 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th. And this is without any of their guys who were up at the top of the TTT in Burgos!

 

[jens_attacks]

kash's time,anyone please?

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Ricardo Velila (Madeinox-Boavista), the camisola naranja (best young rider) just went top 10, but has lost his jersey to Alfredo Balloni (Lampre-Farnese Vini), who was just 12" behind him this morning.

Blanco is already 27-28 seconds ahead of Hernâni Broco, but David Bernabéu is ahead of him at the moment - but only by 10" or so.

Edit: Blanco is now over a minute ahead of Broco. Broco's going to get passed by the Camisola Amarela now.

Bernabéu just went fastest through the intermediate checkpoint! 22'43"

Broco 50" slower at the checkpoint. Which means Blanco's probably fastest by about 30"!

Can you believe that Broco wasn't even brought to this race in the last two years?

WHOA - timing error earlier - Blanco at 22'57", 14" behind Bernabéu. Not enough for his race to be in danger, but surprising.

Blanco in the final TT of the Volta: 2006 1st, 2007 3rd (behind Héctor Guerra and Xavier Tondó), 2008 2nd (behind Héctor Guerra) and 2009 2nd (behind Héctor Guerra, inherited victory after Guerra tested positive).

 

[Ryo Hazuki]

broco seems has lost his itt touch he has as u23 and is focussed nowe on climbing, same with cardoso

 

[Libertine Seguros]

I hope Marque can hold on to that lead, I like him.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

broco seems has lost his itt touch he has as u23 and is focussed nowe on climbing, same with cardoso

Liberty didn't take Broco to the Volta the last two years, it's been some time since he did a competitive ITT of any real length, I think.

Pardilla goes 4th, 16" behind Marque!

BERNABÉU WITH 37'44"!!! 45" ahead of Marque! What a ride!

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Broco does 39'24", which means he'll drop to 5th overall, with Bernabéu, Sinkewitz and Pardilla overtaking him.

BLANCO COMES IN AT 38'11"!

This means that Blanco will retain the camisola amarela, but for the third year in a row, he will come 2nd in the final ITT!

Broco looks absolutely devastated, he really needs a hug.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Stage standing:

1 David Bernabéu (BSP) 37'44"
2 David Blanco (PRT) +27"
3 Alejandro Marque (PRT) +44"
4 Vladimir Isaychev (XAC) +45"
5 Nelson Oliveira (XAC) +52"
6 Sergio Pardilla (CMO) +59"
7 José de Segovia (XAC) +1'00"
8 Patrik Sinkewitz (ISD) +1'06"
9 Rui Sousa (BSP) +1'08"
10 Gustavo Rodríguez (XAC) +1'15"

Provisional GC:

1 David Blanco (PRT)
2 David Bernabéu (BSP) +38"
3 Sergio Pardilla (CMO) +1'49"
4 Patrik Sinkewitz (ISD) +1'56"
5 Hernâni Broco (LRM) +2'07"

 

[Ryo Hazuki]

to be honest it wouldn't surprise me to see rui sousa get caught on epo after this tour... or am I wrong?? he seems to be out of the ordinary strong, also in itt :S

 

[Libertine Seguros]

his TT has been surprising considering he lost 3 minutes to Blanco in the final TT two years ago. I've not been too surprised by his performance in the mountains, typical Sousa aggression, remember that last year he didn't get to do much of his usual attacking since the team had Nuno Ribeiro in the camisola amarela from the first weekend.

 

[Ryo Hazuki]

his TT has been surprising considering he lost 3 minutes to Blanco in the final TT two years ago. I've not been too surprised by his performance in the mountains, typical Sousa aggression, remember that last year he didn't get to do much of his usual attacking since the team had Nuno Ribeiro in the camisola amarela from the first weekend.

normally sousa has been attacking from early on and could never follow the real climbers in portugal after his milaneze days.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Very true. I'm just willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. Maybe the national jersey and change of teams has transformed him the same way the rainbow one and change of teams has transformed Cadel Evans.

 

[Ryo Hazuki]

I hope so. I don't try to really make this a talk about doping but if there's one rider I don't trust in portugese cycling it's him

 

[Ryaguas]

Awesome ride by Bernabeu!!!! I was expecting this... He was showing great performance in the mountains and his form was increasing very quickly... Pardilla inside the top10 but I was expecting more from him...

Now Pardilla to the 3rd place...! bullaaaaa!

 

[craig1985]

Did Filipe Cardoso crash? On the results page it said DNF.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

http://jornalciclismo.com/isidro-nozal-ataca-hernani-broco

Broco was asked questions about whether or not his omission from Liberty Seguros lineups in 2008 and 2009 was because of refusal to dope, and gave ambiguous answers. Isidro Nozal says that "we all know why" he wasn't on the 2008 team (oooh, conspiracy theories!), while he was left out in 2009 because he wasn't considered as reliable a teammate.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

I didn't see today's stage, but the information I can give you is:

Vilela was just 10" behind Balloni in the Young Rider's classification, and so he hoped to get intermediate sprint seconds and then escape near the end or get time bonuses. On Friday, Sérgio Sousa (Vilela's teammate) outsprinted Oleg Chuzhda for mountains points, meaning that Chuzhda couldn't win the KOM, because Chuzhda didn't do his fair share (instead getting a teammate to) in the break in stage 4 with Sousa, but sprinted for KOM points anyway. As a result, when they got to the intermediate sprints, Chuzhda deliberately outsprinted Vilela as revenge on Sousa.

Simon won the sprint but was disqualified for an irregular sprint, meaning Cândido Barbosa (who lost out because of being disqualified for the same reasons on Friday) inherited the stage win; Sérgio Ribeiro's 3rd place means he wins the points jersey. I haven't yet seen whether it was as clear as Cândido's where he went all Renshaw-on-Farrar on Engoulvent and Ribeiro.

 

[Ryaguas]

I didn't see today's stage, but the information I can give you is:

Vilela was just 10" behind Balloni in the Young Rider's classification, and so he hoped to get intermediate sprint seconds and then escape near the end or get time bonuses. On Friday, Sérgio Sousa (Vilela's teammate) outsprinted Oleg Chuzhda for mountains points, meaning that Chuzhda couldn't win the KOM, because Chuzhda didn't do his fair share (instead getting a teammate to) in the break in stage 4 with Sousa, but sprinted for KOM points anyway. As a result, when they got to the intermediate sprints, Chuzhda deliberately outsprinted Vilela as revenge on Sousa.

Simon won the sprint but was disqualified for an irregular sprint, meaning Cândido Barbosa (who lost out because of being disqualified for the same reasons on Friday) inherited the stage win; Sérgio Ribeiro's 3rd place means he wins the points jersey. I haven't yet seen whether it was as clear as Cândido's where he went all Renshaw-on-Farrar on Engoulvent and Ribeiro.

I saw the stage and the final sprint... Simon did it great! at the end he just push a little bit and just ONCE against Barbosa but that was not important for the result cuz was in the las 3m I think... Barbosa was really angry and was yelling to the officials... They were too complacient with Candido cuz Simon didn't do anything wrong... he won that stage in the last 10m!

 

[Alpe d'Huez]

I unstuck this, but am pushing it to the top with this post to hopefully avoid confusion.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

I saw the stage and the final sprint... Simon did it great! at the end he just push a little bit and just ONCE against Barbosa but that was not important for the result cuz was in the las 3m I think... Barbosa was really angry and was yelling to the officials... They were too complacient with Candido cuz Simon didn't do anything wrong... he won that stage in the last 10m!

Barbosa is a whiner. He always moans that they keep trying to change things up so he doesn't win, he was absolutely livid at being disqualified the other day, even when anybody except a Cavendish apologist would have accepted that as an irregular sprint. I think he was pretty affected by the fact that he hadn't won a stage of the Volta yet, and he wasn't going to add to his 417 points jerseys.

 

[sigsky]

I'm not very knowledgeable about the rules, but the finish looked OK to me. If there was any contact it appeared to be incidental, unintentional, and did not seem to affect the outcome. I watched it several times. It would be nice to have understood the announcers and the riders comments but my Portugese is non-existent.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

General consensus is that there was nothing in that, and that Barbosa's been given a bit of a gift by the organisers. Now that I've seen the clip, I have to say that I agree.

Edit: They had Sérgio Paulinho there to ask, and he said he couldn't see anything wrong with it.

 

[craig1985]

Can any of our Dutch friends fill us (or rather me) in on Boy Van Poppel? I see that he finished in the top 5 on the final stage, so is he a sprinter? I know he does cyclo-cross as well. Is he ever going to turn pro with Rabo?

 

[Ryo Hazuki]

van poppel is a sprinter with good climbing skills, good uphill sprinter too. he is a very explosive one just like his dad. if he will ever turn pro it will be at cervelo

 

[DAOTEC]

If Cervélo TestTeam is still around Ryo Hazuki, which is in doubt !