Ridley-bikes-official

Ciao everybody !

I was supposed to post this a couple of weeks ago, but.....better late than never, right ?

Yesterday the Giro d'Italia had its last stage in Verona (reminds you of Shakespeare's drama Romeo & Juliet ?), with the riders making their "passerella" in the magnificent roman Arena, after their TT performance on the 15 km city-course, with the 5 km ascent of Mt. Torricelle.

I think it was one of the best Giros' of the last decade, because every stage was raced as a one-day race. We had a lot of surprises every day and, in the end, the best rider, of the strongest team won, so......

As far as Katusha, I visited the team 10 days ago in Cesenatico and last Thursday morning, before the start of the stage in Brescia.

They are quite satisfied, thanks to the 2 stage wins in L' Aquila, with Eugeni Petrov and the day after in Porto Recanati, with the Italian Champion Pippo Pozzato.

Too bad Vladimir Karpets could not get into top 10, but he can still be pleased with his Giro, considering that he was included in the Katusha rooster for the Giro, few days before the start of the race.

We had some consistent performances by Pozzato, Petrov, Ignatiev and Karpets. Mazzanti showed himself being in some escapes, as well as Horrach and Kolovnev.

I was actually expecting a bit more from recent team entry Caruso, but he explained to me that he had some health problem, after the stage in Campania, in South of Italy, during which he got some kind of virus, that weakened him.

It would also have been great to win a sprint with Robbie McEwen, but we have seen the difficulties great Robbie has now to face competition from emerging young sprinters.

So we won a stage with our Helium (ridden by Petrov) and Damocles ISP (by Pozzato). If Robbie had won a stage, riding his Noah, it would have been a unique record, difficult to repeat, to win 3 different stages with 3 different road bicycle models. Still like this, I think we showed how technical and specific our models are.

So, for now, congratulations to all riders and the organisation of the Giro 2010. Some weeks of relax for the teams and then new excitement coming along with the Tour 2010 !

Thanks for reading.

Luca Brischetto