Cycling: Today, on the seventh day of this year's Giro d'Italia, the longest stage since 1989 was on the agenda: from Grosseto to Fiuggi the riders covered a total of 263km over hilly terrain. Diego Ulissi (Lampre-Merida) wins the sprint, Greipel's legs fail in the final.
Today's escapees were Nicola Boem (Bardiani-CSF), Nikolay Mihaylov (CCC Sprandi), Pier Paolo De Negri (Nippo-Vini Fantini) and Marco Bandiera (Androni Giocattoli-Sidermec). The quartet escaped the field after 25km and quickly opened up a gap of almost 10 minutes. At almost 36km/h, the pace wasn't particularly high today anyway, which was more due to the sometimes violent headwind than to the riders' exhaustion.
Not much happened over most of the distance, the lead of the leading group slowly dwindled, the peloton led by Tinkoff-Saxo, Sky and Orica-GreenEdge slowly picked up the pace. The cameras kept focusing on Alberto Contador, who started in pain after his fall on yesterday's stage. But his shoulder injury never had a negative impact. 15km before the finish line it was time, Nikolay Mihaylov was the last of the escapees to be knocked down and the field was completely together again.
André Greipel struggled to catch up at the back of the field over the climbs, but 2km from the finish he suddenly appeared at the front with two of his teammates. After yesterday's win, he did well today, especially as the profile of the course didn't seem perfect for him. But when Simon Gerrans (Orica-GreenEdge), Elia Viviani, Juan José Lobato (Movistar) and Diego Ulissi finally started the sprint, the German lacked the power and quickly fell back into the field. In the end, Diego Ulissi confidently won the final and relegated Joan José Lobato and Simon Gerrans to second place. Elia Viviani snatched back the red jersey from Greipel with a third place in the intermediate sprint. There were no changes in the overall rating.
Final result, Giro d'Italia 2015, stage 7
[easy table th=“0″]1.,Diego Ulissi,ITA,Lampre-Merida,07:22:21
2.,Joan Jose Lobato,SPA,Movistar,
3.,Simon Gerrans,AUS,Orica-GreenEdge,
4.,Manuel Belletti,ITA,Southeast,
5th, Enrico Battaglin, ITA, Bardiani,
6th,Sonny Colbrelli,ITA,Bardiani,
7.,Fabio Felline,ITA,Trek,
8th, Grega Bole, SLO, CCC,
9.,Kévin Reza,FRA,FDJ,
10.,Sergey Lagutin,RUS,Katusha
[/easy table]