Defending Milan San Remo winner Fabian Cancellara and World Champion Alessandro Ballan will miss the start of Milan San Remo. Cancellara is battling poor form and sickness that has been reoccuring since his prologue win at the Tour of California. Cancellara dropped out of Tirreno Adriatico this week and is trying to establish a program that will allow him to return to top form for the Classics in the next few weeks. Cancellara will race in next weeks Settimana Coppi e Bartali.
I regret not being able to do Milano-Sanremo which for obvious reasons is a race that has a special place in my heart, but I need to be realistic. It’s the best decision based on the form I have right now and more importantly, for family reasons, I wasn’t able to do the race on Saturday either way. I want to stay focused and since I had to exit Tirreno-Adriatico, I need to get more stability and I can only get that from racing and continue my work. I look forward to be gaining more form in the Italian stage race and hopefully, that will help me get some progress and form.
Meanwhile World Champion Alessandro Ballan has been sick with Citomegalovirus which means that he will have to stop racing for 15 days to recuperate from the infection.
Interestingly one of the transmission methods of Cytomegalovirus is through blood transfusions. Hopefully this is not the way Ballan contracted the infection. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cytomegalovirus
Ballan has been having a tough early season so far having to miss Kuurne Brussels Kuurne and Het Volk due to lack of form/sickness. Could this be the curse of the Rainbow Jersey taking hold again?
Checkout the video with textbook Italian teamwork that setup Alessandro Ballan for a devastating attack to take the win. The crowd goes crazy when Ballan launches his attack since he was able to get so much distance.
It is not Paolo Bettini at the top step of the podium, but another Italian Alessandro Ballan with teammate Damiano Cunego in second at the World Championships in Varese, Italy.
(AFP/Damien Meyer)
The winning move came from a breakaway of 12 that had a decent enough gap and a selection of enough big names to last. Three Italians were featured in the break including Davide Rebellin, Damiano Cunego and Ballan. Others in the break were Joaquim Rodriguez of Spain who ever present in front and Matt Breschel who placed third. Since Italy had the numbers and the home turf advantage, the rest of the breakaway companions woul dnot help much. Riders took turns attacking and let the Italians chase. Later on the Italians took control launching progressive attacks to keep the rest of the break on their heels. Rebellin and Cunego could not get much daylight when they would attack.
ROBERTO BETTINI/AFP/Getty Images
Finally with about 2km to go Ballan launched a counter attack that the rest of the break could not respond to. Ballan was off and had enough time to cross the line with his hands in the air. Meanwhile in the main peloton Erik Zabel and Paolo Bettini rode in at a tourist pace with Bettini celebrating Ballans win and waving to the fans to finish out his last race.
After winning the Three Days of De Panne Ballan looked to further continue his Belgian domination. That domination continued on Sunday with Ballan taking an very impressive victory at The Ronde Van Vlaanderen ahead of eternal Flanderian second Leif Hoste. Hoste did all he could as he went with Ballan when he attacked
on Muur of Geraardsbergen. Until that point most all of the favorites bar Fabian Cancellara were ready to pounce. Tom Boonen lead the group up the climb but did not seem to have the extra power to drop everyone. A powerful Ballan pounced up the most difficult section of the climb and was then followed by a very clever Leif Hoste. The pair worked perfectly to maximize their advantage as the chasers behind tried in vain to launch attacks. But after more than 100 miles in the Belgian countryside the extra snap needed to close gaps was not there.
Boonen has entered this season like Pacman eating up wins like they were pellets and leaving the chasing peloton looking like ghosts. When Boonen rides, you can almost hear the wonka-wonka sound as he is approaching yet another win.
The Flanders Hype Machine is looking at Belgian homeboy Tom Boonen to take the spoils again this year. Even Bicirace has cast aside all of the Italian favorites and jumped on the Boonen bandwagon (Actually their Italian pick is one I agree with, Alessandro Ballan, read the restof the story). But who would really dare to pick against Boonen? He has everything going for him at the moment including a win at the warmup GP E3 last Sunday.
