2009 Giro di Lombardia
The bicycle race Tour of Lombardy 2009 was the 103rd staging of the Tour of Lombardy. The event took place on 17 October 2009 and was the season finale to the UCI ProTour. The Belgian Philippe Gilbert sat down with the Spaniard Samuel Sánchez 6 km before the finish off and won the race in the final print. Third place was secured by Russian Alexander Kolobnew who decided to sprint the chasing group for itself.
Route
The route began in Varese, the venue of the Road World Championships in 2008, and led about 242 kilometers to Como. Here, a large loop was driven to Lake Como.
The program included several climbs. After 56 kilometers, it went to 779 meters after Intelvi. After 198 kilometers, 754 meters followed the Madonna del Ghisallo. 16 km before the finish was on the rise after Civiglio that over a length of 2.8 kilometers, has a maximum slope of 11 percent. 6 km from the finish of the decisive climb to San Fermo della Bataglia was overcome, which stretched with a maximum gradient of 10 percent over three kilometers in length.
Participants
The Teams
For race came to a total of 24 teams. These included all 18 UCI ProTeam ag2r La Mondiale, Astana, Bbox Bouygues Telecom, Caisse d' Epargne, Columbia - HTC, Cofidis, Euskaltel -Euskadi, Française des Jeux, Fuji - Servetto, Garmin - Slipstream, Katusha, Lampre- NGC, Liquigas, Milram, Quick Step, Rabobank, Saxo Bank, and Silence-Lotto. A wildcard received the Professional Continental team Acqua & Sapone - Caffè Mokambo, Cervélo, ISD - Neri, Serramenti PVC Diquigiovanni - Androni Giocattoli, TopSportWetten Vlaanderen- Mercator, and Vacansoleil.
Favorites
Among the top favorites included defending champion Damiano Cunego and Philippe Gilbert. The extended circle of favorites included Gilbert's team-mate and world champion Cadel Evans, Robert Gesink, Joaquim Rodríguez, Samuel Sánchez, Alexandre Vinokourov, Fabian Wegmann, Alexander Kolobnew, Ivan Basso, Alessandro Ballan, Giovanni Visconti and Filippo Pozzato, who had but to cancel his participation because of fever.
Race course
The racing action was long ruled by a breakaway group led by Marco Velo, Nicolas Roche, Sergei Klimov and Reinier Honig. Your maximum margin of victory of eight minutes. On the climb to the Madonna del Ghisallo, the group was asked by Johnny Hoogerland, who attacked from the peloton. On the descent, Matteo Carrara, Mauro Santambrogio, Dries Devenyns, Gustav Larsson and Daniel Martin caught up with him and formed a new leading group.
After initially the Rabobank team had organized the tracking work, was the pre-decisive tightening pace of the increase after Civiglio by the world champion Cadel Evans with an attack from the peloton. After the lead group was caught up in the downhill, Alexander Vinokourov, Jakob Fuglsang and again Santambrogio put on the field. On the final climb to San Fermo della Damiano Cunego Bataglia led the chase group back to the outlier approach, so that a closed about 25 riders scoring group was formed for a short time with almost all the favorites.
Exactly at the 6 km mark - a few hundred meters before the end of the climb of San Fermo della Battaglia - Philippe Gilbert put the decisive attack. Only Samuel Sánchez was able to follow him. The top two went out a lead of up to fourteen seconds for the pursuer. On the home straight Gilbert finally struck Sanchez in the final sprint and already achieved so his fourth win in 10 days. The sprint of the chasing group won Alexander Kolobnew and thus secured third place.