Giro Donne/Giro d'Italia Femminile 2009

[resal1]

Legs - you were right. Pooley is now in the driving seat to take the event. Cervelo have the team and the management to get behind Emma. Columbia will definitely attack but Cervelo should be able to get Pooley up to any serious threat. Will - I don't know about Cooke getting any coverage - none of the girls get any coverage that is anything other than tokenism. In the daily papers after the GB Champs it was as if we were in Victorian times, only the Guardian gave anything other than a sentence to the women, after a decent bit on the men's event.

 

[Will1985]

resal1 - a general sports fan will have heard of Cooke and probably Pendleton but that is it. Of course the coverage of women's cycling is poor, but what exists is heavily skewed towards Cooke because she is the Olympic and World champion. It took a team of quality riders on both occasions to put her in the position to get the wins but many of the reports ignored this.

A recent episode on the BBC was Cooke winning the Giro del Trentino - report was posted within 6 hours of the victory. Emma won 2 stages and the GC at the Grande Boucle, yet it took over 36 hours post victory (plus the 606 posters doing a lot of pestering) for the BBC cycling correspondent to even write that, despite updating his blog twice about Cooke in that time period.

 

[Skip Madness]

Ina Teutenberg won today's bunch sprint ahead of Kirsten Wild and Monia Baccaille. There do not appear to have been any shifts on GC, unsurprisingly.

 

[resal1]

Emma still going well. A pity about those few seconds.

Will, the mainstream press write about not much more than Nicole because it is all they can mention in the 1 sentence they write. The BBC are shocking with their coverage of the women's scene. In fact I think it is worse this year than in the last 3 or 4 years now that they are gripped with the twin pre-occupations of "return of the great one" and "wonder Cav". Cycling Weekly give little space to women's races, I can't ever remember seeing a proper report on one for years. It is a shame because in the mid 90's and earlier, I can remember them doing excellent reports on the women's national champs. However CW do seem to give Pooley a fair deal and Lizzie - in fact wasn't last week's magazine the first time they have featured a shot of Cooke racing in the World Champs jersey ? Perhaps they were trying to go the whole year without featuring a picture of her racing in the jersey !! but still we get no reports of races and so it is very hard to develop an understanding of the characters around Armistead, Pooley and Cooke.

 

[Skip Madness]

Emma still going well. A pity about those few seconds.

Yes. They aren't necessarily going to be important but it was a bit of a daft thing to happen. Not sure why it did - anyone know?

Cycling Weekly give little space to women's races, I can't ever remember seeing a proper report on one for years.

I got my hands on this weeks Tour de France preview issue today, and I can't find a single mention of this race. Not even a page.

 

[Legs]

Stage five serves up a gradual 90km ascent from sea level to 1000m before a descent into Cerro al Volturno. It's another chance for the sprinters, although the profile may also favour a long escape.

According to the race manual, today's finish is 500m of cobbles at 16% - not exactly the sprinters' domain! I expect Abbott, Arndt and Neben will be looking to claw some time back on Emma in the mad scramble.

 

[Skip Madness]

Yep! You can't see that in the profile graphic which is what I was going on before, but I read about the finish yesterday and it should be a good one. I'd be surprised if we see gaps much bigger than 5-10 seconds between any of the big names, but there are also the time bonuses to make things more exciting. I reckon Noemi Cantele will be the one to beat today.

 

[Legs]

Good call Skip! EP still in pink, will have to wait a while longer for fuller results...

 

[Skip Madness]

Thanks. Bronzini and Teutenberg finishing second and third suggests the finish wasn't as selective as we thought it might be. The tension of waiting on the full results always bugs me, though - hopefully all is as it was at the start of the day.

Edit - Pooley made a bit more time on everyone except Häusler and Arndt. Häusler is now up to second, still at 1'11", Arndt is third at 1'27", while Mara Abbott has slipped to fourth at 1'29". So it was pretty unforgiving, but Bronzini and Teutenberg were strong enough to power up it thanks to the short distance.

 

[Skip Madness]

Sadly Amber Neben had a bad crash today and had to withdraw from the race.

 

[Flying_Monkey]

Pooley has been riding a very canny race so far. This is part of what makes her a really fine rider - sure, she can look like a crazed mountain escape artist sometimes, but she's got a very good tactical head on her shoulders.

Go Emma!

 

[Legs]

Shake-up today:

Risultati: 6a tappa Giro d'Italia
9 luglio - Giro d'Italia Internazionale Femminile, VI tappa - 2.1 UCI - 119,3 km

1. Judith Arndt (Team Columbia-HTC Women)
2. Claudia Häusler (Cervélo Test Team)
3. Nicole Brändli (Bigla Cycling Team)
4. Mara Abbott (Team Columbia-HTC Women)

Classifica generale

1. Claudia Häusler (Cervélo Test Team)

 

[Skip Madness]

Thanks Legs. So Pooley must have lost at least 1'02" today, most likely more. I wonder if she couldn't hold up with the pace or if it was a tactical move by Cervélo to let Häusler chase/initiate the move.

Here we go with the waiting again...

 

[Flying_Monkey]

Thanks Legs. So Pooley must have lost at least 1'02" today, most likely more. I wonder if she couldn't hold up with the pace or if it was a tactical move by Cervélo to let Häusler chase/initiate the move.

Here we go with the waiting again...

Looks like I chose the wrong moment to praise Pooley's tactical nous!

 

[Legs]

Nah, it was Skip wot did the cursing...

Emma Pooley will see her name all over a stage like this

Wish they'd put up the results faster!