Denis Menchov (Geox-TMC) started the Giro d’Italia with the intention of repeating his victory of 2009. With just three stages to go though, he sat in a disappointing eighth place, as the race headed into the mountains once more.
As a strong time triallist, Menchov can hope to make up time on most of those ahead of him in the overall classification; whether he would be able to make up enough though, on the flat 26km course around the streets of Milan, would depend on how he fared on the two preceding mountain stages.
“I’m not really happy, but it’s okay, you know,” the Russian told VeloNation on the start line of stage nineteen in Bergamo. “I think there are three hard stages ahead, so maybe we can improve.”
At the start of the stage, Menchov sat just 16 seconds behind stage fifteen winner Mikel Nieve (Euskaltel-Euskadi), 20 seconds behind stage thirteen winner Jose Rujano (Androni Giocattoli-CIPI) and 26 seconds behind Belarusian Kanstantsin Sivtsov (HTC-Highroad). Certainly those first two would be vulnerable to “the Silent Assassin” in Sunday’s time trial, but he would have to keep them under control in the preceding two mountain stages.
While Menchov was hunting those above him in the standings though, white jersey holder Roman Kreuziger (Astana) trailed him by just nine seconds and clearly has designs on moving up the classification.
“I think I can; I’ll try to do it, you know,” said Menchov.
Unfortunately for Menchov though, the accelerations at the end of stage nineteen, as race leader Alberto Contador (Saxo Bank-SunGard) chased lone breakaway Paolo Tiralongo (Astana), proved to be too much. He finished 1’01” behind Tiralongo but, more importantly, lost time on most of his rivals.
Both Kreuziger and Joaquim Rodriguez (Katusha) have leapt over the Russian in the standings and, although he has overtaken Rujano, he has dropped to ninth place.
The top six is still within range of the 2009 winner, if Sunday’s time trial goes as expected, but won’t be if he loses much more time on the road to Sestriere tomorrow.