Yesterday pain caused Ben Swift to faint after the stage but today the Brit proved that he is a tough guy. Despite being plagued by his injuries, he mixed it up in the Giro d'Italia sprint but unfortunately chose the wrong wheel in the finale.
Ben Swift just missed out on a top-10 finish as stage seven at the Giro d’Italia came down to a frantic sprint in Foligno.
Following the wheel of the red jersey of Elia Viviani, a minor contretemps up ahead stalled the duo’s momentum and made it difficult to move up on narrow roads heading into the finish. Fifteenth place was the end result for Swift, who rebounded well along with his team-mates after crashing 24 hours earlier.
It was Nacer Bouhanni (FDJ) who edged ahead to take his second stage win of the event, the Frenchman holding off Giacomo Nizzolo (Trek Factory Racing) and Luka Mezgec (Giant-Shimano) in a combative sprint.
For the first time in the race, the stage took place on largely dry roads and Team Sky finished safely ahead of a weekend in the mountains.
The Maglia Rosa of Michael Matthews placed fourth on the day, the Orica-GreenEdge rider narrowly missing out on time bonuses but doing enough to comfortably maintain his 21-second lead over Cadel Evans (BMC Racing).
After the stage Sports Director Dario Cioni gave us an injury update and praised the team for pushing on after a difficult day on Thursday.
"The guys aren't 100 percent recovered after the crashes but they got through better than we maybe expected which is a credit to them," he explained. "There are still quite a lot of bruises around.
"Swifty had a hard crash yesterday so just to get him to the finish today was a good result. He tried in the sprint but it's always better if you can have a few days to recover. We'll do that and we'll pick it up again.
"Puccio and Edvald (Boasson Hagen) tried to go in the break early. We were quite heavily marked, it felt like. The stage finished close to Puccio's hometown so it would have been nice.
"Tomorrow is an important day for (Dario) Cataldo with the final climb. I don't think the GC right now reflects his condition. He was unlucky to crash and then have the problem with the chain. He lost a lot of time and had to time trial up the climb on Thursday. He did a really good job to limit his time loss and it's still a long Giro. There's plenty of time to catch up."
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Michal MICKA 38 years | today |
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