ILNUR ZAKARIN OF Katusha soloed to a snow-capped summit finish victory on a chaotic 13th stage of the Giro dโItalia on Friday that shook up the overall picture.
The Russian thereby climbs to third in the overall standings, which is where the now 29-year-old finished on the 2017 Giro.
Sloveniaโs Jan Polanc of Team UAE kept hold of the overall lead as favourites another Slovene Primoz Roglic and Italian Vincenzo Nibali crossed the line together 2min 57sec adrift, with Briton Simon Yates and Colombian Miguel Angel Lopez another two minutes back.
On this first summit reckoning in a mountain-packed second section of the Giro, the peloton climbed to 2237m altitude, with Zakarin dropping Spainโs Mikel Nieve in the final section and beating him by 35sec at the panoramic finishing post in the Gran Paradiso national park.
Movistar pair Mikel Landa and Richard Carapaz came third and fourth on a great day for the Spanish team as Dutchman Bauke Mollema climbed to fourth in the overall with his fifth place on the day.
#Giro 102 Stage 13 | #Giro 102 Tappa 13
โ Giro d'Italia (@giroditalia) May 24, 2019
๐ฅ @IlnurZakarin - @katushacycling
๐ฅ @NieveMikel - @MitcheltonSCOTT
๐ฅ @MikelLandaMeana - @Movistar_Team pic.twitter.com/jQSC6Qy9N8
The two favourites, Roglic of Jumbo-Visma and two-time Giro winner Nibali of Bahrain, kept close tabs on each other all day with both men taking frequent turns to test each other.
Colombian hope Miguel Angel Lopez of Astana, who was third on last yearโs Giro, had been leading that pair until he suffered yet another mechanical cost him precious initiative.
But the dayโs biggest loser, over five minutes behind Zakarin, was Simon Yates, a Briton who rides for Mitchelton-Scott, whose pre-race bravado will haunt him after declaring himself the man to beat.
Eddie Dunbarโs Team Ineos, formerly Sky, had a mixed day, losing 24-year-old climber Tao Geoghegan Hart to an early crash, but seeing their 21-year-old Russian climber Pavel Sivakov finish ninth to climb into the overall top 10 and shoot to the top of the young rider white jersey standings.
Saturdayโs stage looks even tougher with five climbs and 4,000m elevation on the menu. The penultimate climb, the Colle San Marco is 10.5km with an average gradient of 9.8 percent.
Gavan Casey is joined by Ryan Bailey and Andy Dunne to look ahead to Saturdayโs Pro14 final, look at whether Joey Carberyโs move has paid off and Jack Conan talks about how his body is holding up:
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A very sick season os Soccer/ Football continuesโฆ
After all that it doesnโt even shoe the pen.
No surprise there, that competition makes most of its income from bribes. Thatโs the reason there are doubts over next yearโs Copa America in the USA as most of the money already spent on it has been in bribes.
Feel bad for Panama but itโs the same deal with UEFA seeding play-offs at the last minute to those countries with a bigger TV audience make the big tournaments. Ireland know all about how bad that feels.
Shocking scenes itโs far more aggressive in Central American football I think.Watched Club America v San Jose last week and the Club American lads reacted to everything but horribly aggressively,they always seem to feel the need to put their hands on the opposition for any foul commited ,in fact after one tackle a San Jose player went down injured and the Club A captain raced from one side of the pitch to push him while he was down and was red carded.After the game a fan invaded the pitch and the San Jose mascot which was no more than 5โ5 was escorting the man off behind police and a player shoved the mascot full force from behind despite the fan doing nothing to him/the game being over and his team had just won.Completely unnecessary and could see this last night too.More protection is needed for players/refs and fans from these sort of teams.On the other hand Jamaica are in the final which is pretty sweet!managed by the lad who managed Cameroon in the 2002 WC against us.
Ay caramba!
Anyone else think this was a stonewall penalty?
ya he pretty much dived on the ball
Itโs like an anti-Thierry Henry incident.
More than enough time with all that going on to check a replay