Happy to see Sam Bennett finally win in a GT!

The QS train delivered Viviani a perfect lead out, Bennett stayed patient and rode around him in the final 10 metres - Outstanding

---

res, non verba

that did look like a bit of line deviation from Bennett though; not sure what to think of it (I liked the win, but also those types of moves are dangerous, and he did actually body check a rider)

Yeah...Viviani was able to launch with about 125 to go with a clear shot to the line. That's textbook for a flat finish. For Bennett to be able to come around is pretty amazing.

Propers to our man Trail who currently leads (and may well stay there) in the Velogames thing. His team is 631 out of 21000+.

Coodoz.

Wasn't going to say anything because I've *always* come in near dead-last in velogames, and usually less than half my team makes it to the last day.

I thought it was a bit of a risk taking two GC-types from the same team. But these two seem to be genuinely happy for each other. Chaves handing out thank-you drawings to every member of his team after his win nearly brings tears to my eyes. It's funny to think of Wiggins-Froome/Landa-Quintana/Armstrong-Contador handing each other thank-you drawings.

Bennett's line was questionable the other day when he drove Viviani to the barriers on the right and then swung across to the left again but today looked okay to me. The rider he contacted was a Quickstep rider looking to obstruct him from chasing Viviani. I think it was legit.
A good win. First GT win in a while for an Irish rider.

Having Pinot, Yates and TD going forward into the mountains is big, and it doesn't look like Chavez is at all done. Mich Scott seems to be riding with a lot of joy and camaraderie. I'll bet the vibe on the Sky bus is different. And Sven Tufts is a class guy.

Yep, the minimal bumping today was completely legit. Nice to see Bennett win, he was obviously very pleased to get his 1st GT stage win. He's usually impetuous but took his time to launch, even freewheeling briefly not that far from the line. Nice job!

I think since Nick Roche? Dan Martin hasn't won one, which is interesting. A little, anyway.
It's refreshing to see a wide open race and no dominant team for the GC.

I finally signed up for the flobikes coverage. Things were busy at work this week (and will be for the rest of the summer), but being able to watch all the replays and features is awesome! Thanks guys for the link. it works well.

Pretty sure Martin won a stage at the Vuelta (back in 2011 or 2012); also a stage at the 2013 Tour. A good while back, sure, but he's had success.

Will be interesting to see if Froome is banged up after today's fall to the poinit that it affects tomorrow's summit finish or if he bounced back OK. He did ride back up to the group and went to the front and he rode back down the mountain, so I suspect it's just a little spill on wet stuff and the fall was "well lubricated"

in unrelated news, Andrei Griepel just won solo after attacking his break mates on a climb. Always liked the Gorilla, and his solo/small group raids in the classics in service of his teammates were always commendable, but this is a bit different. Perhaps he could seriously challenge for a spring classic if the stars align

right you are......11 for Vuelta, 13 for TdF..guess Roche won after that...in the discussion of Irish wins, Martin never came up....i guess 5 years is ancient history

Love him too, but winning a stage against the guys who didn't get picked for the Giro or ToC is a far stretch from challenging for a classic.

OK, back to the Giro....tomorrow 26K of climbing to a summit finish ending about 2000m:

Final kilometres: the ramps are steep over the last 7 km. The route reaches over 2,000 m in altitude on a relatively wide road, with gradients of around 9% and topping out at 13%. The finish line (6 m in width) sits on a 120-m long tarmacked home straight.

first real major climbing stage, and only in the Giro is it rated a 3/5 in terms of difficulty.

Would be interesting to see how Dumoulin copes with the altitude (iirc, that was partially what contributed to the nature stop last year)

Think Orica and Pinot could do well

I think most of this stage is at 1000m or under. The dual Stelvio climb stage spent a decent chunk of the day between 1500m and 2700m....just all the time spent at that altittude (they would have spent around ~120 min above 1500m at full throttle vs at 1000m makes the dual Stelvio climb stage more prone to mild altitude sickness type side effects. I think on this stage it should be negligible in terms of time at altitude, it's just a power to weight game tomorrow.

yo, 40k of climbing to finish the day....this is Alpine grinder, rhythm guy territory, will be interesting to see who's in the break and how long a leash they get...i think it could be a stickabreaka day if a climber who is about 27 mins down gets away on that bump in the middle of the course but it's still a long way to go and big mountains beckon and team GC hopes are not dashed yet...... Gesink, Plaza, Roche, Hermans?

Break has 8 minutes and 1.5 minute virtual pink jersey on the flats before the climbing starts soon! Looks like pretty good weather so far, but they are saying 50% chance of rain further up the road on the mountain. Just saw a really borderline sticky bottle hand off. They just need to add that to Ironman Texas to complete the draft-dope-drive trifecta towards super fast bike splits!!!

I love my virtual trip to Italy every spring. I will go back to ride and watch one of these years (well, I guess I have to get back to riding first). The only time I actually saw the Giro in person was bike touring in 1985. I was riding with my buddy from Cortina d'Ampezzo to Innsbruck and the Giro was riding towards Val Gardena (if you are a downhill skier, you know all these towns). That was an awesome Giro because it was the first time there was an American team in a Grand Tour. Lemond and Hinault were on the same LaVie Claire team and competing with the Italian heros Moser and Saronni. I got pretty hooked following the Giro during that bike tour on nightly TV in the local bars. After a while I realized that riding into a bar with a Canadian bike jersey and a loaded touring bike around 5 pm daily was a good chance of the local bar owner giving myself and my buddy dinner on the house after 6-10 hours in the saddle!!!

In any case, 1985 got me hooked on the Giro. Since then, that's the part of year that I really get into my cycling overdose....this year the final week of Giro coincides with the Champion's league finals. I will be completely useless on the weekend of May 26/27!!!!

one of my rules (more of a guideline) is not to use the term "epic" unless there is a decent chance of death.....this finish with the weather may not be epic, but fookin' crazy hard at the very least ...in honor of Mother's Day, it's gonna be a mother...........Ef has Carthy up the road, Woods is still in after Astana smashes it, Joe D riding clean up with Woods still.......

The cool thing about the Giro (and also the Vuelta) is that there are pretty well high mountains available anywhere in the country within 200km of where you are, so the organizers can throw in mountain stages whenever they want. For the TdF they are locked into covering a a good spread of France which means mainly rollers or flats if you're not in the Alps, Massif Central, Pyranees. The Jura and Vosges are not really "high enough" to create those separations at the pro level

Carthy has a shot at a yuuuge win for EF.

look for Chaves again; has good kick

Good bye asthma boy