MILAN, 31 May 2004 — Italian sensation Damiano Cunego handed his Saeco team overall victory in the 87th edition of the Tour of Italy here yesterday after a final stage won by Fassa Bortolo sprinter Alessandro Petacchi.
The 30-year-old Petacchi took his stage victories record in a single edition of the race to nine, bringing to 15 his total number of stage wins in the Giro.
Petacchi timed 4hr 07min 01sec after a sprint finish to come in ahead of Italy’s Marco Zanotti and Aart Vierhouten of the Netherlands after the final 154km stage between Clusone and Milan.
In the overall standings after 3423km of racing, Cunego led Ukrainian veteran Serhiy Honchar by 2min 02sec with defending champion and two-time winner Gilberto Simoni placing third.
While 22-year-old Cunego’s audacious victory will prove a sensation in cycling-mad Italy, so too will the feats of Petacchi, who last season became the first man to win at least three stages in the major Tours of Italy, France and Spain in the same year.
In the final stage the seemingly un-catchable Petacchi held off Zanotti, Vierhouten and Germany’s Olaf Pollack to further stretch the Giro’s record of stage victories. Before Petacchi came along this year, it stood at seven and was shared by three former riders.
Cunego, who is only in his third season as a professional, claimed four stages on the race, winning two prestigious mountains stages and wearing the leader’s pink jersey for 11 days in total.
The Verona-born champion stole the pink jersey from his team captain Simoni after the seventh stage, after which it appeared that Simoni was only biding his time before bringing his younger teammate to heel.
But that plan didn’t materialize.
Despite losing the lead after the 13th stage time trial to Trieste, Cunego struck again on the way into the Dolomite mountains to retake control of the race, much to the annoyance of Simoni.
Cunego then went on to control his rivals with ease in the final two mountains stages, one of which he won on Friday to claim his fourth stage.
Despite a late effort by Simoni on Saturday where he finished behind stage winner and 2000 Giro champion Stefano Garzelli, Cunego kept his cool.
A former world junior champion, in 1999, Cunego — who is already being seen by many as the heir to the recently-deceased Italian champion Marco Pantani — has claimed ten victories so far this season.
