Davide Piganzoli’s great performance at the Maurienne Classic: second and king of the mountains on a day with 4,300 metres of elevation gain
Tour de Savoie Mont Blanc / Maurienne Classic
La-Tour-En-Maurienne – Saint-Julien- Mont-Denis (139 km)
Davide Piganzoli put in a great performance and nurtured the possibility of a victory this Saturday in the new Maurienne Classic, the former Tour Savoie Mont Blanc converted into a one-day race, with a sensational second place finish. The race, with a remarkable hardness, more than 4300 metres of unevenness in less than 140 kilometres, was won by the Australian Matthew Dinham (Team Bridgelane). David Domínguez finished fourteenth.
The Italian, who had finished third on both the early Col d’Albanne and the later Col de la Confrerie, went on the attack on the last of the day’s four big climbs, the Col du Sapey. There Dinham had managed to catch up with his team-mate and compatriot Samuel Jenner, who had been leading the race up to that point.
Piganzoli, with a minute and a half to go, broke away from a chasing group and was able to catch Jenner. Dinham, at that point, had already launched his offensive to take the lead and finally Piganzoli, who reduced many gaps, finished 31 seconds behind the winner.
A race in which the EOLO-KOMETA Cycling Team looked for the protagonist from the first moment, in spite of the fact that in a section of sterrato in the first kilometres Fernando Tercero suffered a puncture in his front wheel that forced him to work hard to return to the group, with an active Arnau Gilabert in the first compases. At La Confrérie both Tercero and David Domínguez worked hard for Piganzoli, who also took the overall mountain classification. After the first two climbs, with Anthony Baudis and Antoine Debons in the lead, the main group was practically reduced to around twenty riders.
“It was one of the most demanding races we have ever done because of the amount of elevation gain in this distance, the heat and the fast pace from the start. There was a tough climb right from the start and there was a lot of movement. A great selection was made and from then on it was an exercise in survival, trying to save as much strength as possible, especially for the last climb, which had a very hard final kilometre. I tried to make up the deficit with the race leader and it was not long. But it’s a second position that I’m very satisfied with because of the particularities of this race. The final average was no more than 30 km/h and that sums it all up”.
