The second stage of the Giro d’Italia took the riders 156km from Jesolo to Trieste where Alessandro Petacchi of Team LPR Brakes took the stage win from Cavendish in a Mass Sprint finish. This takes Petacchi’s total stage wins for the Giro in his career to 20. On television he exclaimed "I’ve been planning for three days how to beat Cavendish and I managed to execute my scheme to perfection. A kiss to my baby boy at home".
Petacchi also revealed that he took advantage of Cavendish who is slow to start sprinting. Mark Cavendish (Team Columbia-Highroad) stays in Pink (Maglia Rosa) and race favourite Ivan Basso finished at the rear loosing time.
A narrow, curving finish-area provided the setting for numerous crashes that held up Team Astana’s Levi Leipheimer as well as former Giro d’Italia winner Ivan Basso (Liquigas), causing both to lose time on the overall classification after stage two. But with many, many kilometers still to race it’s certainly the hope that unfortunate circumstances like those today don’t play into the final results of the race three weeks from now. Amrstrong finished ahead of the spills and rests in 10th on GC. The tricky sprint finish was taken by a bike length by Alessandro Petacchi (LPR Brakes) over Mark Cavendish (Team Columbia) but the British sprinting star retained his race lead and still wears the Maglia Rosa.
German rider Matthias Russ, of Team Milram was hospitalised afte a crash in which he broke his left collarbone. There were a number of crashes and most teams complained that it was a dangerous circuit.
Stage 3 of the tour is from Grado to Valdobbiadene (198 km).
Top Ten Results for Stage 2
1 Alessandro Petacchi (Ita) LPR Brakes – Farnese Vini 3.43.07 (41.951 km/h)
2 Mark Cavendish (GBr) Team Columbia – Highroad
3 Ben Swift (GBr) Team Katusha
4 Allan Davis (Aus) Quick Step
5 Tyler Farrar (USA) Garmin – Slipstream
6 Oscar Gatto (Ita) ISD
7 Francesco Gavazzi (Ita) Lampre – N.G.C.
8 Davide Vigano (Ita) Fuji-Servetto
9 Manuele Mori (Ita) Lampre – N.G.C.
10 Dries Devenyns (Bel) Quick Step
General Classification after Stage 2
1 Mark Cavendish (GBr) Team Columbia – Highroad 4.04.43
2 Mark Renshaw (Aus) Team Columbia – Highroad 0.14
3 Michael Rogers (Aus) Team Columbia – Highroad
4 Thomas L?vkvist (Swe) Team Columbia – Highroad
5 Edvald Boasson Hagen (Nor) Team Columbia – Highroad
6 Tyler Farrar (USA) Garmin – Slipstream 0.16
7 Alessandro Petacchi (Ita) LPR Brakes – Farnese Vini
8 Christian Vande Velde (USA) Garmin – Slipstream 0.20
9 Bradley Wiggins (GBr) Garmin – Slipstream
10 Lance Armstrong (USA) Astana 0.27
Website: Giro d’Italia
Coauthor: RC
