For a man whose nickname is ‘The Shark’, Vincenzo Nibali isn’t taking particularly big chunks out of his rivals. He’s more like one of those tropical fish which nibbles away at dead skin – Vincenzo Nibbly, if you will.
Today’s stage featured well over a minute of visible action as TV cameras didn’t come into play until the final 400 metres due to the horrendous weather (Italy is not selling itself as a May holiday destination this year). Those 400m were first travelled by Nibali and Mauro Santombrogio. The latter won the stage and moved up to fourth overall, while Carlos Betancur followed shortly afterwards and gained himself yet another podium place – if he can learn to time trial, he’ll be a hell of a rider.
The important gaps were of course those to Cadel Evans and Rigoberto Uran. Evans was 33 seconds down and Uran was 30 seconds down, so Nibali’s pulling away. Domenico Pozzovivo finished with Evans and is now seventh overall. Robert Gesink lost four minutes or so and is now 11th, which seems an appropriate level of away-from-the-cameras nothingness with which to continue his rich tradition.
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