43rd GP San Giuseppe - 1.6

Italy, March 16, 2003

Results Past winners

Australian team report

By Brian Stephens, AIS U23 coach

The AIS Mapei Aqua team has had its first start after a rocky first week in Italy. We came earlier than planned to be in Modena for a team launch arranged by Mapei, for the two cycling teams that they are sponsoring this year: ours and the Mapei mountain bike team in which Australians Sid Taberlay and Trent Lowe and are racing.

Things turned bad last Thursday when, as the team was descending a mountain, a dog ran out of a drive way into the path of Gene Bates. He had no chance to even touch his brakes before going over the dog and breaking his collar bone. He spent two nights in hospital in has been told that it will be 30 days before he can ride his bike.

The other more minor problem was for Bernard Sulzberger, who hit his knee on the handle bars while training, which caused a few problems that he is overcoming now.

We travelled to Marche on the weekend for the GP San Giuseppe for Elite and Under 23 riders. With Gene out and Aaron Kemps, Peter Dawson and Ashley Hutchinson yet to arrive due to them doing the World Cup track meet in Mexico, we went to Marche with only four riders, Brendan Cato, Bernard Sulzberger, Lee Godfrey and David Betts.

The race coincided with a cold snap which hit Italy this weekend with the stage of Tirreno Adriatico being cancelled due to bad weather, about 50 kms from where we were racing. We had no snow but a strong cold wind was blowing across the course which consisted of five laps of 15 km followed by four tougher ones of about 19 km.

There was not a lot of action for the first half of the race with the bunch happy to leave two riders hovering a couple of minutes off the front, but things came to life when the race went on to the second circuit with the field splitting everywhere.

Brendan Cato had a mechanical problem and had to fight hard to regain the bunch, which he did but the effort told on him soon after and he was dropped. David and Bernie stayed with the depleted front group until two laps remaining with Lee riding aggressively to finish 16th.

The major placings were dominated by the Grassi Colnago team which had three riders in the first group of four, and another two in the next group of six. Lee also won the prize for the youngest rider in the top 25 and we were the first foreign team.

Results - 159 km

1 Aliaksandar Kuchynski (Blr) Grassi Colnago            4.04.00 (39.098 km/h)
2 Gianluca Cavalli (Ita) Olio Vezza Brunero                0.30
3 Gianluca Coletta (Ita) Grassi Colnago                    0.35
4 Cristian Tosoni (Ita) Grassi Colnago
5 Daniele Marziani (Ita) Grassi Colnago                    1.25
6 Giacomo Cariulo (Ita) Grassi Colnago
7 Antonio D.Aniello (Ita) Podenzano Italfine               1.42
8 Emanuele Sella (Ita) Zalf Désirée Fior
9 Valeriy Kobzarenko (Ukr) Aran World Cubo                 1.50
10 Roberto Savoldi (Ita) L.Edile Prefabbricati Rosa Carni  2.46
...
16 Lee Godfrey (Aus) AIS Mapei Aqua Australia              4.35

Past winners

2000 Roberto Savoldi (Ita)