Stage 11 - GC shake-up in earthquake region

Today's stage was the longest of this year's Giro at 262km and took the race through the L'Aquila region of Italy, which was hit by an earthquake last year. Talk was of a spring classics type route and the weather was certainly spring-like, as the rain, (and hail, wind and fog) returned and the riders faced a very long day in more shitty weather. Some 56 riders obviously wanted it all to be over as quickly as possible and they got themselves off the front after 20km and started to put some serious time into the rest of the race.

It's unusual to see such a big group off the front, but they were soon some 17 minutes ahead of the pink jersey group as Sky, Caisse d'Epargne, Cervelo and Saxo bank worked hard to put their riders back into the race. Vino, Evans, Basso and Nibali, (and Pinotti damn it!) were all back down the road, chasing in an ever-shrinking group as they watched their high GC positions disappear. Evgeni Petrov won the stage and then the rest of the lead-group finished in bits and pieces after splitting-up over the last few km.

Saxo Bank's Ritchie Porte now wears the pink jersey, while the Vino group eventually came in a whopping 12:45 down on the stage winner. Porte started the day happy enough wearing the white best young rider jersey and wouldn't have guessed he'd be swapping it for pink.

I guess it serves me right for getting all cocky about my Evans and Vino  fantasy team selections yesterday. Astana are down to 6 men and there's now just 5 BMC riders left, it seems they were too busy arguing with Liquigas about who was going to do the chasing and by the time they realised the danger, it was too late. So back in the race are Sastre, Tondo, Arroyo, Gerdemann, Wiggins and Efimkin, with the former GC leaders left with a lot of work to do. Remember there's 21 stages, so we're only just past the half-way mark, with a very hard final week in the mountains.

 

Those Velogames scores have just appeared and I'm still just hanging on at the top. I think my high scoring days might be over for a while though and now teams with Sastre and Arroyo could be the ones to worry about.
 

You'd think that the bunch might want a bit of a rest tomorrow and stage 12 should follow the traditional break-catch-sprint formula, but as we've seen, you can't count on much in this year's Giro.