Velochimp: Astrochimp on Cycling

Damiano Cunego surprisingly beat Franck Schleck up the final Cauberg climb to win Amstel Gold. The revenge must be sweet after losing to Schleck at L’Alpe D’Huez in 2006. Cunego now looks to be the favorite going into Liege-Bastonge-Liege since it is better suited to his abilities. Lampre has also announced the Tour de France lineup backing up Damiano Cunego which in all likelyhood is a bid to win the race.

Lampre will also line up their sprinter Danilo Napolitano, Marco Marzano, Daniele Righi, Paolo Tiralongo and ‘Patxi’ Vila. “We clearly aim at winning the overall classification of the Tour de France with Cunego this year,” directeur sportif Bruno Vicino said on the start line of the 7th stage of the Presidential Tour of Turkey in Antalya. Two other Lampre riders have yet to be chosen.

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Cunego has been slowly getting his ducks lined up to tackle the Tour as a GC contender. Since his foray into France in 2006 where he impressed with a Best Young Rider jersey win and 11th place overall. The key factor in his BYR jersey win was his much improved Time Trialing ability. This is a skill that is key to winning in France. Now that it looks like Damiano and Lampre are putting in a serious bid for the yellow it will be interesting to see how he lines up against other favorites such as Alejandro Valverde and Cadel Evans.

CSC seemed to be a team in serious trouble this early season as several riders were injured so early in the season. Despite riders such as Stuart O”grady and Christian Vande Velde being out and Bobby Julich delaying his form, the CSC men have been producing better results than previous years. This year CSC won some major Classics with Cancellara taking Paris-Roubaix and now Frank Schleck taking Amstel Gold.

Nice work for a team that has much larger ambitions later in the year, but Ivan Basso already looks to be in great form just in time for the Giro next month.

Eurosport: Schleck’s golden gift