Giro d'Italia Internazionale Femminile, Cat 2.9.1

Main Page Report: French rider Marion Clignet, second on the first stage was nonetheless given the maglia rosa and is leading the Giro d'Italia Femminile. The victor for the stage, Italian Gabriella Pregnolato, was penalised 20 seconds by the race jury. The jury of commissaires ruled that Pregnolato, who suffered a mechanical problem earlier in the stage, had drafted behind her team car for an excessive period in the company of her teammates. The Italian went from 1st place to 37th place at 11 seconds to Marion Clignet. Stage 1, Ravenna Mirabilandia - Misano Adriatico, 95 kms: AVS: 41.211 km/h 1. Gabriella Pregnolato (Ita) Acca Due O Lorena Camice 2.20.56 2. Marion Clignet (Fra) Acca Due O Lorena Camice 0.09 3. Zita Urbonaite (Ltu) Acca Due O Lorena Camice 0.09 4. Gitana Groudyte (Ltu) Team Aliverti CDE Elettromeccanica 0.09 5. Karen Kurreck (USA) G.S. Edilsavino 0.09 6. Gulnara Ivanova (Rus) Acca Due O Lorena Camice 0.09 7. Joane Somarriba Arrola (Spa) Team Alfa Lum-William Aurora 0.09 8. Alessandra D’Ettorre (Ita) G.S. Selene Rama Mista 0.09 9. Nada Cristofoli (Ita) G.S. Edilsavino 0.09 10. Sigrid Corneo (Ita) S.C. Master Automazioni Molteni Record 0.09 GC after Stage 1 1. Marion Clignet (Fra) Acca Due O Lorena Camice 2.21.05 2. Zita Urbonaite (Ltu) Acca Due O Lorena Camice 3. Gitana Groudyte (Ltu) Team Aliverti CDE Elettromeccanica 4. Karen Kurreck (USA) G.S. Edilsavino 5. Gulnara Ivanova (Rus) Acca Due O Lorena Camice 6. Joane Somarriba Arrola (Spa) Team Alfa Lum-William Aurora 7. Alessandra D’Ettorre (Ita) G.S. Selene Rama Mista 8. Nada Cristofoli (Ita) G.S. Edilsavino 9. Sigrid Corneo (Ita) S.C. Master Automazioni Molteni Record 10. Lenka Ilavska (SLo) Slovak Cycling Team s.t. .. 37. Gabriella Pregnolato (Ita) Acca Due O Lorena Camice 0.11 Maglia Arancio (Foreign Riders): 1. Marion Clignet (Fra) Acca Due O Lorena Camice 2. Zita Urbonaite (Ltu) Acca Due O Lorena Camice 3. Gitana Groudyte (Ltu) Team Aliverti CDE Elettromeccanica Maglia Bianca (Under-23): 1. Gitana Groudyte (Ltu) Team Aliverti CDE Elettromeccanica 2. Alessandra D'Ettorre (Ita, G.S. Selene Rama 3. Nicole Brandli (Swi) Mista Acca Due O Lorena Svizzera Kristy Scrymgeour Reports from the Australian Team: We've left the excitement of pink lycra tri suits in Germany and have moved on to Italia for the start of the girodonne - womens tour of Italy. There are seven of us in the team and two other Australians (annabelle Vowells, and Bridget Evans), riding for Italian teams. We woke this morning to a gorgeous 36 degree day. We were all quite nervous and excited, but at the same time thankful that day one was free of mountains/hills, until.......... The Stage started quickly with a tail wind to push us along, so it was important to maintain good position at the front. It started to settle after about 45mins giving us a chance to catch up with bunch gossip. The only piece of action was poor Margaret coming down in a crash and having to hop on a spare bike for the remainder of the race. She did very very well to get back onto the bunch just in time for the hills, no skin off thankfully. I was feeling quite good just cruising along in the peleton, just what I needed to get my legs back into race mode. Then with about 30km to go, when we started to think about our plans for the end of the stage (presuming it would most probably come down to a bunch kick), we got hit with the unexpected. The next 20km split the bunch to pieces with multiple short but very steep hills. About 25 riders manged to stay together at the front when Pregnolato, attacked with 2km to go never to be caught. The bunch kick was won by Marion Clignet (Dream Team). It turns out that Pregnolato was later penalised for receiving assistance from her team car so Marion Clignet now wears the pink leader's Jersey. Sarah Carrigan, Alison Wright, and Kym Shirley from our team managed to finish in a respectable bunch only 4 mins down. Margaret finished alone 6mins down, and Natalie Bates, Geraldine Denham and I finished in a bunch of about 15 riders, 8mins down. So much for an flat stage to ease us into the race. Karen Kurreck Reports Today we started the women's Giro d'Italia. There are 22 teams, most of which have 8 riders. If you do the math, that's a big field! I have never done this race before, but I have been looking foward to a good race with good food! There are only 5 different hotels for the entire 12 days. Anyone who has ever done the Tour Feminin can appreciate what that means. To an Italian team, the GIro means everything. This means pressure for results but it is nice in that the teams pull out all the stops to try to help the riders recover. We have 2 soiugniers here as well as a motor home for the transfers. Now if I could just get them to open the windows... Unfortunately for us, we lost Catherine Marsal for the race. She suffered one of every rider's worst nightmares. At the French nationals this past weekend, she was there with I guess her French club team, but she stayed at a different hotel and raced in the EdilSavino jersey. She gave the address of where she was staying to her team, but she thinks they were mad because she wasn't wearing their jersey. In any case, they failed to notify the race organisation where she was the night before. The UCI vampires came in the morning and Cathy was not notified. The result is a 2 week suspension. She appealed the decision before a judge, and came to our hotel for the race start this morning before she heard the final verdict - the suspension was upheld. Obviously she is pretty devastated by the whole thing. The French press had a field day initially, and printed stories about her failing the test before the facts were out. The fact is she was never even tested, and later on, the press was on her side. Today's stage was 97km and the first 60km or so were dead flat. We heard there were some rollers in the last 30km, but basically it looked like a stage for the sprinters. This turned out not to quite be the case. I was hoping for a relatively easy stage to flush the trans-Atlantic flight out of my legs. The heat turned out to be a factor as well - it was about 90 degrees and 90 percent humidity. The race also wasn't as short as it seemed because we had to ride neutral for 45 minutes before the start. In spite of the weather and it being a long stage race, most of the Italians still had only 1 water bottle cage on their bikes! I don't know how they do it. I went through 4 bottles and it wasn't enough. Only 25km into the race, I was chatting with Petra Rossner at the back. She said she had already had her butt tapped more times here than in the entire HP and Tour de l'Aaude put together. Even she said the pack made her nervous. This is coming from someone who can duke it out with the best in the world in the hairiest of field sprints! Welcome to Italian racing! There were a number of attacks in thye first half of the race, but between the teams with sprinters and the teams with GC riders, nothing got more than about 50m. There were a few times when I thought to myself that it seemed kind of hard for a flat race with no wind. Then I looked down at my speedometer and saw we were going 56kph! After about 60km, we started hitting the hills. They were a lot more significant that I had expected. None of them were longer than 1km and most were less than that, but some were steep and they kept coming at us. With 10km to go, I'm guessing the front group was whittled down to maybe 40 riders. With about 2km to go, Gabriella Pregnolato made her trademark solo attack. She was reeled in fairly quickly though. With 500m to go, I managed to get near the front. With 150m to go, I was in 4th position but I was boxed against the barricade with no room to even try to come around the 3 riders ahead of me so 4th I stayed. Pregnolato won, which was pretty good given her earlier attack. I'm not sure who was 2nd and 3rd, I just know they were Italians because I now have the "maglia straniere" - the jersey of the top foreign rider.