Giro di Sardegna, Rohregger and more:

23rd February 2011, 20.05. An Italian family is watching a cycling race on tv.

'Hey dad, did you hear what has recently happened to Tondo (ndr; whose name means 'circle' in Italian)?', one of the daughters asks the father. 'No, I don't', answers the father. The daughter is going to tell him the news of Tondo's tip to the Spanish police, when her young sister suddenly begins to speak: 'I know what happened to Tondo! He became Square!!'.

After reading these first lines of this post, I think you've finally understood why my mental condition is so bad: simply, it is in the family genes. However, that was just one of the little dialogues that I had with my familiars a hour ago, while we were watching Giro of Sardegna' second stage (one of said dialogues also included my sister screaming: 'Where the hell have the breakaway riders gone?' while Cunego was crossing the finish-line; in fact, in that moment she hadn't realised yet that the breakaway riders had ended their lonely adventure about 6 kms before of the finish-line).

Anyway, the most important thing about this post's beginning is that not only miss Fede's sense of humour could be even worse than it is, but the real great news is that she's finally managed to watch a cycling race on tv at a decent time of the day (allelujah!). Before of tonight in fact I had managed to watch just the first stage of TDU and a stage of Tour of Oman but unfortunately, in order to do so, I had to stay awake until 11.30 pm- not a very clever idea, if the following day you have to get up at 6.25 in order to go to the bus stop, where you'll find that disturbing, logorroic boy who stares at you during your whole journey to school.

By the way. I'm digressing again.

Talking about Giro di Sardegna, yesterday stage was won by Peter Sagan. Today stage, instead, was won by Damiano Cunego, who exulted in a great way after the finish-line. In fact, not only did he raise his arms: he even went towards a tv camera, shouted 'Evvai!' and started to shake it.
I was very happy for Damiano, because during last year Tour de France some people (*cough* journalists *cough*) were really terrible with him. Moreover, journalists had tried to eat him alive after Mendrisio Worlds. So, considering all the critics and pressure that Cunego has had to carry on his shoulder since May 2004 (and that have become even bigger over the last years), I always feel incredibly happy when he wins. When he wins, in fact, I always feel as if it's a deserved victory. I like Damiano, I can't help it.

Second in today's stage (which was very hilly and whose 7 final kms were completely uphill) was Serpa 'Zorro' Perez, whose moustache are much more stylish than Pozzato's ones. If you don't believe me, look at the pic above (by Sirotti). Third in the stage was the little Sella, José's teammate, while 4th was Peter Sagan. Unfortunately for him, Peter couldn't keep the leader jersey, which is now on Cunego's shoulders.

Amongst the riders who did a very good job today there are Hermans (the Radioshack rider was 4th), Capecchi (5th), Scarponi (who did an outstanding job for Cunego), Kiserlovski and Stortoni (Colnago riders are really brave, they always attack as soon as they can). Ballan was 15th (he was second in yesterday stage) and hopefully this means that he's back at the level that he had when he won the Varese Worlds. 25th was 40 year-old Noé, while a special mention must go to the breakaway riders du jour: Mikhail Ignatiev (who kept his knees in a very strange way while riding uphill), David Boily, Alessandro De Marchi, Elia Favilli and Alessandro Malaguti. De Marchi was the best breakawayer (?) du jour, since he abandoned the peloton after just 8 kms (18 if you consider the 10 kms between the start village and the true start of the race) and he was caught with just 6 kms to go. Therefore, chapeau to Alessandro!

RANDOM NEWS:
Talking about breakaways, you'll be happy to know that Andy Schleck was part of a breakaway during today's Ruta del Sol stage, wich was eventually won by Freire. Good to see our boy riding at the front of a race! :D
Still talking about Andy, he now has a new teammate: Thomas Rohregger, born on the 23rd December 1982, former Milram (and Pegasus) rider, winner of 2009 Tour of Austria. A good climber and another German speaker for Leopard Trek. All together now: *Herzlich Willkommen, Thomas*!!

On to another news, Jens Voigt has recently said that the riders should do something 'big', like boycotting this year Worlds, to show their disapproval of UCI's radio ban. Aren't we exaggerating a bit? (http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/voigt-calls-for-worlds-boycott-over-radio-ban ).

Still facing the news du jour, I've just read on Cyclingnews that Amstel Gold Race organisers have given their race's wild cards to the following teams: Topsport Vlaanderen (yay!), Landbouwkrediet (double yay!), Skill Shimano (we want Kenny Van Hummel!) and Verandas Willems.

I also wanted to put the link to a little Cyclingnews article in which Romain Feillu said that, perhaps, Vacansoleil shouldn't have given Riccò a contract, but unfortunately I couldn't find it anywhere. Well, it seems like someone was brave enough to say these things publicly.

Anyway, it is pretty late right now, so here I close this post (which isn't actually that great, but that was written in a big hurry). Have a good evening and a good night sleep!
(pic by Sirotti)