Cycling: Today, eight days after the start of the Giro, the second really difficult mountain stage was on the agenda. Paolo Tiralongo from Astana cheered after 224km with several meters of altitude and partly extremely steep ramps. Giant-Alpecin's Simon Geschke takes a great third place and Contador loses a second to Aru in the final meters.
Shortly after 11 a.m. this morning, the riders from Benevento set off: 224km and more than 4000 meters in altitude were on the program for this Sunday – a real touchstone just over a week after the start of the Giro d'Italia. It took an unusually long time today until the first group was finally able to pull away from the field - but after 52km it was so far and eleven drivers escaped to the front, including Carlos Betancur (ag2r-La Mondiale), Paolo Tiralongo (Astana), Ryder Hesjedal (Cannondale-Garmin), Simon Geschke (Giant-Alpecin) and Steven Kruijswijk (LottoNL-Jumbo).
The group's lead quickly grew to over four minutes - but the peloton, led by Astana and Tinkoff-Saxo, didn't let the breakaways get away any further today. After 150km, the first drivers in the lead and also in the field showed the first signs of exhaustion. Simon Geschke, who won the mountain classification on the Colle Cataldo (category 1), had a really good day. By this point the lead over the peloton had dwindled to under two minutes, but on the descent one of the support bikes fell between the front and the peloton - the peloton had to slow down and the lead group got a little farther away again.
Attacks from the leading group kept coming, be it from Slagter, Tiralongo or Herrada – but none of them were crowned with success for the time being. So while a wild battle of attrition was raging at the top, the maglia-rosa group pulled away from the field behind, just like the day before. Again it was the big favourites: Fabio Aru, Alberto Contador and Richie Porte. Rigoberto Uran was once again unable to keep up today and the good performance yesterday seems to have been just a flash in the pan - in the end the Colombian was more than a minute behind Contador, Aru and Porte.
Tiralongo plucked up courage with 8km to go and put everything he had into it again - this time it worked and the Italian drove ahead of Slagter and Krujswijk. The man from Astana clinched the day's victory seemingly effortlessly, 21 seconds ahead of Steven Krujswijk and Simon Geschke won the sprint in the chasing group by two seconds. Fabio Aru surprised Contador and co. a few meters from the finish again with a strong attack, which in the end brought him a second over Contador and Porte.
Final result of stage 9, Giro d'Italia 2015
[easy table th=“0″]1.,Paolo Tiralongo,ITA,Astana,05:50:31
2.,Steven Krujswijk,NED,LottoNL-Jumbo,00:00:21
3.,Simon Geschke,GER,Giant-Alpecin,00:00:23
4.,Amael Moinard,FRA,BMC,
5.,Jesus Herrada,SPA,Movistar,
6.,Carols Betancur,COL,ag2r-La Mondiale,
7th,Tom Jelte Slagter,NED,Cannondale-Garmin,
8.,Kenny Elissonde,FRA,FDJ,
9.,Ryder Hesjedal,CAN,Cannondale-Garmin,00:00:27
10.,Fabio Aru,ITA,Astana,00:00:56
11., Alberto Contador, SPA, Tinkoff-Saxo, 00:00:57
12th, Richie Porte, AUS, Sky,
[/easy table]