ELIA VIVIANI MADE it a double delight in Israel on Sunday as he won his second Giro d’Italia stage in a row in a bunch sprint finish at Eilat, with Ireland’s Sam Bennett coming home in third.
The Italian survived a near-brush with the safety barriers on the side of the road as he sprinted to the stage three finish in the Red Sea resort, edging out compatriot Sacha Modolo with Bennett, riding for Bora-Hansgrohe, finishing third for the second consecutive stage.
Australia’s Rohan Dennis kept the race leader’s pink jersey.
Viviani was perfectly placed on Bennett’s back wheel as the sprinters launched their charge to the line but just as he tried to dart out from behind the Irishman, Bennett lurched across the road.
He went from the far left to the far right, almost barging Viviani into the barriers.
But the experienced Italian kept his cool and leant his shoulder into Bennett, who veered back to the left, leaving a channel for Viviani to burst through and win.
Viviani, 29, wasn’t best pleased with Bennett but his victory proved ample compensation.
“I won and so don’t want to start a polemic. He moved big time. We made contact but I went through,” he said.
“He went on the left and so I went on the right but then he moved across the road.”
The fast-finishing Modolo pipped Bennett for second at the end of the long, straight 229-kilometre stage through the barren Negev desert.
Taken to the barriers: ✔
— Eurosport UK (@Eurosport_UK) May 6, 2018
Wins anyway: ✔
Elia Viviani is unstoppable right now at #Giro101!#EurosportCycling pic.twitter.com/dh899D44Ym
Race favourite Chris Froome and last year’s winner Tom Dumoulin both enjoyed an uneventful day riding safely in the peloton to finish in the same time as the winner.
Dumoulin remains in second, one second behind Dennis with Portugal’s Jose Goncalves up to third at 13sec after Belgian Victor Campenaerts lost time at the finish.
“It was a very long day and a little stressful with the wind,” said Dennis.
Froome remains in the top 20 with a 38sec deficit to Dennis ahead of Monday’s rest day before the fourth stage begins in Catania following the transfer from Israel to Sicily.
After three days racing in Sicily, the Giro will move onto the Italian mainland, although not before the overall contenders have had a chance to test themselves on a summit finish at Mount Etna, the highest active volcano in western Europe.
Sunday saw a three man breakaway go clear almost right from the start with Canadian Guillaume Boivin making it into the escape group for the second day in a row.
He and Italian Marco Frapporti lasted almost 225km in the lead in scorching temperatures well over 30 degrees Celsius before they were swallowed up by a charging peloton.
Ryan Mullen finished 78th and Nicolas Roche crossed in 82nd position.
With reporting from AFP
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Delighted for the lad! Would be great if in the future more young Irish players could come back for half a season play some LOI and go back with that bit of experience, seems to have done Eoghan no harm
Ambrose and boyata are both a liability,simunovic still an unknown quantity so I’d say it’s a toss up between o Connell and kolo to partner sviatchenko.would be great to see eoghan nail down a regular spot and continue his progress
That is brilliant news for Celtic and Ireland.
I watched the match – O’Connell showed great character throughout the game.
Can’t but read Rogers interview in his voice
Lads…. were ye watching a different game,,, he was 100% to blame for the goal…. lost his man completely
Blueman, you’re right, the goal was his fault but his head didn’t go down after it as most young players would and he went from strength to strength as the game went on.
It’s a zonal marking system, therefore no man to lose. Although he could have been better for it so could every other defender in the box and if Gordon stayed on his line maybe it wouldn’t have been a goal so 100% is very harsh on the the young fella. For a 20 y/o making his first European start in a notoriously tough place to go he done very little wrong and was one of Celtics better players. If you were watching the match and not just the goal you would have seen that!
O Connell did well all things taken into account,good result to take back to glasgow
Fact is the goal was his fault, you can dress it up anyway you want,… football at the highest level is a harsh game, and goals decide games, if he wasn’t a young irish player playing for celtic , people wouldn’t be raving about his performance and making excuses for his defending for the goal… think we need to take off the green white and gold glasses here…. and I did watch the full game
Blueman there’s nobody bigging him up.if simunovic can be kept fit and playing regularly,o connell won’t get much game time.at the moment he’s the pick of a bad bunch and just a potentially good defender
Blueman get a grip ffs. He’s 20 years of age, made one or two small mistakes in the biggest game of his career to date. Start blaming the young man now and giving him abuse about the goal could shatter his confidence, that’s why he’s being praised. Attitudes like yours is the reason a lot of talented youngsters don’t make it in the game!
Hahaha…. one or two small mistakes???… wouldn’t call losing his man for a goal in a champions lge game a small mistake. … its quite a significant one. If young pros can’t take a bit of criticism they may as well forget about a career in the game…. and I thought he he will let a bit of criticism on the 42 get to him… if he he was that type of character he would never have made it this far
You said people wouldn’t be raving about his performance if he wasn’t Irish or playing for Celtic. Well this is an Irish site and an article about Celtic, so obviously people who have a better understanding of the game than yourself (and people who really watched the game) think he merits praise for his performance! And if you’re a Celtic supporter you should be ashamed of yourself :-/
I am not a celtic fan … I am looking at the game… which I watched in full from an unbiased point of view… it’d obvious your biased towards him, , and if u can’t see he was at fault for that goal than it is you who doesn’t really know that much about football….