Of the riders who gained time in the incredible breakaway on the road to l’Aquila, Liquigas-Doimo captain Ivan Basso sees only one as a genuine threat to the overall. Of the list of names in that group, only the Cervélo TestTeam captain has been a Grand Tour winner in the past, and it is only this man that Basso is worried about.
"The only dangerous customer from that breakaway was Carlos Sastre,” he said after the stage, according to Het Laatste Nieuws. “If anybody deserved the break to work, it was the Spaniard. After his bad luck the first week he is now tactically sharp.”
Basso thinks that none of the other riders who managed to leapfrog the rest of the big race contenders will be able to hang on to their new positions once the race hits the tough Italian Dolomites. “The rest will blow up in the final week,” he concluded.
Included in the list of riders who are now ahead of the Italian are: Bradley Wiggins (Team Sky), who finished 4th in last year’s Tour de France, David Arroyo (Caisse d’Epargne), who finished 10th in last year’s Giro d’Italia, Linus Gerdemann (Milram), who won the 2008 Tour of Germany, and Xavier Tondo (Cervélo TestTeam) a strong mountain domestique of Sastre’s.
The race lead is now held by 25-year-old Australian Richie Porte who, while untested at this level, finished 11th in the Tour de Romandie earlier this month. None of these riders, says Basso, is worth worrying about.
Basso now sits in 15th place overall, 11'49" behind Porte