Gilbert was excellent today in the Tour of Lombardy 2010. Scarponi was very good and Nibali showed grinta; especially given that he rode and won at San Luis, Argentina way back in January.
07.00, Saturday, San Remo - a dream come true. I've been to, I can't remember how many Tours, a clutch of Vueltas and Giros, but there's something special about wakening-up here. The Via Roma is just two streets away and the Poggio is a five minute drive - all those boyhood hours spent staring at pictures of Eddy Merckx notching-up his seven wins - and here I am.
Who’s Filippo Ganna? Just the World Individual Pursuit Champion, that’s all. But don’t worry, we’d never heard of him either, until he won it. The rot first set in when the UCI ‘unified’ the professional and amateur pursuit titles in 1993 and cut the distance back to 4000 metres – the pros had previously contested the title over 5000 metres. But wet rot gave way to even nastier dry rot after the Beijing Olympics when the UCI announced that the individual pursuit was being chopped from the Olympic programme.