A world championship to remember for Peter Sagan, another world championship race to forget for the blue expedition led by coach Davide Cassani. The Slovakian, the eternal runner-up, got rid of the tag of today's Tano Belloni as best he could not have, winning the world championship in Richmond in a big way with an authentic bike acrobat's reach in the last two km of the race.
All in all, a boring race, characterized by an initial escape propitiated by Taylor Phinney, the local idol useful for warming up the support of the Americans, an initiative which, however, ran out when there was still a long way to go before the finish. For some laps the news was only the monotonous "all in a group". Only 30 km from the finish line did the race wake up. The British Ian Stannard gave the shock on the hardest stretch of pavé, short but enough to move the waters again. Stannard dragged behind him the defending champion from Ponferrada, the Pole Mikal Kwiatkowski, the Dutch Bauke Mollema, the Belgian Tom Boonen, world champion in 2005, the Spanish Dani Moreno, the Costa Rican Andrej Amador and our Elia Viviani. Important names, too many for the group not to have a prompt reaction. So this flame too went out just before the start of the last lap. All together again in view of the final skirmishes. On the first snatch it was Stybar and the German John Degenkolb who stretched without ever realizing a significant advantage. On the second 2 km from the finish, the hardest one, the Belgian Greg Van Avermaet attacked immediately followed by Peter Sagan who took his wheel and then forcefully detached him with an action like a great finisseur.
The world championship was his. Sagan had plenty of time to turn around to see that no one could now take his rainbow jersey away. He is the first Slovak to win it. A success all the more suffered and deserved because in practice Sagan raced alone as Slovakia entered only three riders against the nine of the powers in world cycling.
For the others three seconds behind the new world champion there was only the battle for the other two places on the podium: it was the Australian Michael Matthews who won the silver by burning the Lithuanian Ramunas Navardauskas, bronze medalist, in the sprint. Fourth was Alexander Kristoff, fifth the Spaniard Valverde, once again defeated but always with the honors of arms.
To find the first of the Italians you have to go down to the 18th place of Giacomo Nizzolo. An order of arrival that crudely ratifies the flop of the blue adventure in Virginia with our leader, Vincenzo Nibali, only 42nd, even detached in the final tussle after 259 km run in complete anonymity like Diego Ulissi, always in the rear of the race , to accumulate a delay of almost seven minutes at the finish line.
For Nibali, all that remains is the Giro di Lombardia, next Saturday, to positively reverse an otherwise lean season.
