Filed under: Other Sports, Cycling
In a heady 24 hours for British teams and riders, three sprint victories confirmed that the days of GB being a non-factor in the world of road racing are long gone.However, this also being the wonderful world of Mark Cavendish, there was a fair smattering of controversy involved in his particular success at the tragedy-hit Giro d'Italia on Tuesday.
The Manxman stormed to an awesome victory in stage 10, a 159km sprinters' stage from Termoli to Teramo, and, in so doing, gained revenge over Alessandro Petacchi, the Italian who had appeared to impede Cavendish in beating him in an earlier stage last week.
On that occasion, the notoriously partisan Italian judges were never going to punish Petacchi, even though he had clearly, and illegally, cut across Cavendish's line as the pair motored to the finishing line but, in Teramo, Cavendish showed that with his HTC-Highroad team designed specifically to deliver him for the final sprint, the 24-year-old is virtually unbeatable on his day.
That was not the problem.
The controversy had come on Sunday in the first gruelling mountain stage of a particularly hilly and tough Giro when Cavendish was accused in the Italian press of having received an illegal tow from a team car on one of the two ascents of Mount Etna in order to make sure he finished within the time limit.
Spaniard Francisco Ventoso and Murilo Fischer of Brazil made the accusations which Cavendish addressed after his stage win.
"I've had these accusations my whole career, its part and parcel of being a dominant sprinter in a dominant sprinting team," he said. "If anybody wants to spend just ten minutes with us in the grupetto they will see we have commissaires and cameras with us all the time. There were six of us in the group on Sunday and we rode as if our lives depended on it to make the cut."
A Giro that will be forever remembered for the tragic death of Belgium's Wouter Weylandt last week has also been described as one of the toughest in recent memory because of the volume of climbing involved, a fact that made Cavendish's victory all the more important.
"There are only three proper sprints in the Giro this year and I thought it might happen on the first day but that made me even more determined today, which was obviously going to be a sprint finish," added Cavendish.
Sprints were also the order of the day on the other side of the Atlantic at the Tour of California.
After stage one of the eight-stage race was cancelled due to snow in the ski resort of Tahoe, Team Sky's promising young British rider Ben Swift sprinted to victory on Monday's stage two.
He was unable to hold onto the leader's jersey on Wednesday but the consolation came in him handing it over to team mate Greg Henderson, the New Zealander who had been trying to lead out Swift but ended up taking the victory himself when his team mate failed to position himself correctly.
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Source: http://www.fanhouse.co.uk/2011/05/18/cycling-how-mark-cavendish-and-britains-road-reputation-is-sky/
Daniel Alves Daniele De Rossi David Albelda David Beckham David Ferrer
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