Sprinter Mattia Gavazzi (Androni) had declared his firm intention of finishing the Giro d'Italia in his home town of Brescia and had fought hard through the mountains to stay in the race. However, repeated tows of team cars have seem him been kicked out of the race, thus crushing his dream of contesting the sprint in front of his family and friends.

Mattia Gavazzi has received plenty of TV time in this year's Giro d'Italia. Always struggling at the back of the field whenever the road has pointed upwards, TV viewers all over the world have noticed the Italian's struggles. The reason behind his hard effort was a dream of finishing the race by contesting the expected bunch sprint on the final day in his home town of Brescia.

However, those dreams have now been crushed after the race commissaires took the decision to kick out the Italian sprinter due to repeated tows of the team cars in yesterday's long stage to Ivrea. He had managed to finish the stage dead-last as part of a small group 17.17 behind winner Benat Intxausti (Movistar) but the race jury were merciless when it came to determining the punishment for his rule infringements.

Team manager Gianni Savio had given the sprinter a third chance prior to this season when the Italian was allowed into the Androni team after having served his second suspension for cocaine use. He quickly paid back the confidence by winning the final stage in the Tour de San Luis in January and since then has been keen to show that his problems are now behind him.

Hence, it was no surprise that Savio was sad to see his sprinter leave the race.

"It's a pity but he's out of the race," he told Cyclingnews. "I warned him about holding onto cars but it seems he did it twice. Not with one of our cars but to some others. It's a pity and I'm sorry for him but I hope it's also a little lesson for him. He was desperate to make it to Brescia but he shouldn't have done what he did to try and make it."

Gavazzi himself posted a short twitter message shortly after learning of his disqualification, the words "A mistake... a broken dream..." telling everything about his state of devastation.

The sprinter was one of the sprinters to be taken out of contention by a crash in the lead-in to the sprint on the opening day in Naples but he bounced back with a 5th place in Margherita di Savoia. He missed the split on the rainy day to Treviso and so he only got one chance to show off his finishing speed in this year's Giro d'Italia.