After almost a week of relentless pressure from his rivals, David Arroyo (Caisse d’Epargne) has finally succumbed and relinquished his pink jersey to Ivan Basso (Liquigas-Doimo). The Spaniard took the jersey on stage 14 to Asolo, but owes it more to having been part of the 56-rider breakaway stage 11 to L’Aquila that regained him all the time that he had lost in the first week and more.
At the time he was dismissed by many, who said that Carlos Sastre (Cervélo TestTeam) was the only one of the group to worry about in the long term. By holding the jersey until the penultimate mountain stage he has proved many wrong.
Even as he took the jersey though, he was already losing time to Basso, 2’14” alone on that Asolo stage. The next day on the road to Monte Zoncolan he lost a further 4’10”; then on the time trial to the Plan de Corones he dropped another 1’06”, leaving his lead over the 2006 race leader at just 2’27”.
Today’s stage over the fearsome Passo del Mortirolo proved to be just too much for Arroyo and, despite closing to within 40 seconds of the stage-winning group at the base of the final climb, he lost a further 3’06” and his maglia rosa.
“We knew it was going to be a really hard stage and Liquigas was going to battle until the end of the race,” said Arroyo after the stage. “I tried to ride in an intelligent way, calculating the efforts in the Passo del Mortirolo. It was a pity being so close to keeping the maglia rosa but not being able to catch Basso and the others.
The group of five riders that Arroyo was a part of on the final climb also contained World champion Cadel Evans (BMC Racing), Alexandre Vinokourov (Astana), John Gadret (AG2R-La Mondiale) and Sastre. Of those, only Evans was the only other rider who really had any reason to chase Basso.
“In my group there were some riders with no motivation to fight,” he added. “Besides, our strengths were scarce. Therefore the time difference of Basso increased enough for him, to become the new leader.”
Arroyo now sits in second place, 51 seconds behind Basso and 1’39” ahead of Basso’s teammate Vincenzo Nibali; he has just one more tough day in the mountains and the 15km final day time trial between him and his best ever finish in a Grand Tour.