MONTEVERGINE, 16 May 2004 — Italian cycling sensation Damiano Cunego signaled his ambitions by winning the seventh stage of the Tour of Italy here yesterday to steal the leader’s jersey from his Saeco team leader Gilberto Simoni.
Cunego, the winner of stage two last week, is being hailed by many in Italy as the perfect replacement for the recently-deceased Marco Pantani — and showed that he certainly has the legs to follow in Pantani’s footsteps.
On the first serious climbing test of the three-week race, the 22-year-old from Verona held off Australian Brad McGee and Italian duo Franco Pellizotti and Giuliano Figueras on the 17-kilometre climb to the summit finish of the Montevergine sanctuary.
He now has a 10-sec lead over reigning Giro champion Simoni, who had started the day with a 13-sec lead over his younger team-mate but finished this stage in sixth just behind another former winner, Stefano Garzelli.
In third place in the overall standings is Franco Pellizotti, who is 28secs behind Cunego.
The 214km stage from Frosinone to Montevergine started off badly for some of the Italian tifosi (fans) as veteran sprinter and former world champion Mario Cipollini decided to call it a day, having crashed earlier in the race.
However it took only an hour for the stage to liven up, with Italian Luca Mazzanti and Niki Aebersold of Switzerland, after a 191km breakaway together, being caught with 13 of the final climb’s 17 kilometers to race.
Although Simoni, the reigning Giro champion, did his best to control some potentially damaging attacks on the climb, he could do little in the final stretch as Cunego’s young legs pulled him clear to allow him to claim his seventh victory since April.
Ulmer Posts Sizzling Time to Win Women’s Pursuit at World Cup
In Sydney, New Zealand’s Sarah Ulmer rode close to a world record time in winning the women’s 3 kilometers individual pursuit final on the second night of the cycling track World Cup meet here yesterday.
The Commonwealth Games gold medalist produced the outstanding ride of the meet, recording three minutes 31.157 seconds, in easily winning the final against Switzerland’s Karin Thurig.
It was just three-tenths of a second outside the world record set by the Netherlands’ Leontien Van Moorsel Zijlaard in her gold medal effort at the 2000 Sydney Olympics and a second faster than the time recorded on the same track by Australian star Katie Mactier last month. It was a big night for Great Britain with Scotland’s Craig Maclean winning the men’s sprint in two straight races against Spain’s Jose Antonio Villanueva Trinidad.
