Riding the last mountain stage of his career, Marco Pinotti signed off with a burst of aggression on the concluding climb of Mentougou Miaofeng mountain today. The BMC Racing Team rider was riding his third-to-last day of racing as a professional and bridged up to lone leader Adam Hansen (Lotto Belisol) after the Australian attacked.
They were in turn joined by Joe Dombrowski (Sky), with Pinotti pushing the pace on the twisting climb.
The latter won the Tour of Ireland in 2008 and also clocked up TT stage wins in the Giro d’Italia and road race stage victories in the Volta al Pais Vasco. He announced his decision to retire earlier this month and was seeking to go out with a flourish today.
While he knew that it would be very difficult to win the stage, not least with a number of specialist climbers in the group behind, the multiple Italian TT champion said that he wanted to have a go, and also knew that his attack could help set up other BMC Racing Team riders if they had the legs.
“All week, I have been feeling well. I have been training for this race after the world championship,” he said after the stage. “This is a course that's very good for me and I can show what I can do when the climbs aren't so hard.
“I tried to go, hoping the riders behind were looking at each other because there were not so many riders with teammates left.”
Pinotti’s group was however reeled in, after which several others played their card and eventual stage winner Benat Intxausti (Movistar) jumped clear.
Pinotti’s team-mates didn’t have the oomph to challenge, with Mathias Frank best of them in tenth place, six places ahead of his Italian team-mate.
Still, the latter is glad that he rode aggressively on the final climb of his career, signing off with panache.
“I tried to help the team by attacking from far out. I don’t have the sprint for the final and I was hoping for Matthias and Dominik [Nerz]…they were going a bit better for me and I tried to anticipate.
“In the end I really had fun on the last climb,” he said
The Tour of Beijing concludes tomorrow with a flat stage in the city. Pinotti’s final competitive event will be the Chrono des Nations time trial in six days’ time.
After that he will work with the team in a sports science capacity.