Vincenzo Nibali, recent winner of the Giro del Trentino where he beat Cadel Evans and Bradley Wiggins, returns to this Sunday's Liege-Bastogne-Liege with the intention of taking that victory that last year was narrowly taken away by the Kazakh Maxim Iglinskiy, who is also his teammate at Astana from this season. The arrival in the Ardennes of the "Shark" strengthens the hopes of success of our Italian cycling which up to now, this season, has always been on the sidelines in the big spring events, like the Belgian one which always awaits Philippe's acute Gilbert, acute that has not been seen so far but that could materialize tomorrow in the last classic-monument of the North.
A route of 261,5 km, characterized as always by a succession of climbs with the last one, the Cote de Saint Nicolas, which has gradients of more than 10 percent, a less harsh wall than that of Huy of the Freccia Vallone but which placed a few kilometers from the finish line could be the springboard for a solo. Whose? For the bookmakers, given at 6, there are two favorites who have already entered the golden register of Liege: Gilbert, winner in 2011, and the Spanish Alejandro Valverde, first in 2008. Nibali is listed at 8, more popular than Joaquin Rodriguez , captain of the Katusha and of that Dani Moreno surprise winner of the Freccia.
Other candidates for success are the two big names of Team Sky, Chris Froome and Ritchie Porte, the Canadian Ryder Hesjedal and the Czech Roman Kreuziger who made the Amstel Gold Race his own. Absent Peter Sagan, at the starting line there are also two candidates for success in the next Tour de France: Alberto Contador and Andy Schleck. The Luxembourger, lately rather distracted and lost, obtained his only victory in a classic-monument in Liège in 2009. A success by Contador would please those who bet on it with a return 50 times higher than the bet. Meanwhile, speaking of money, in Liège there was more talk of fines than prizes, 500 lire each, those that the local Court imposed on about twenty runners, including Gilbert, for throwing water bottles on the street in the edition of last year. Until yesterday there was even fear of a halt for these "polluting" cyclists.
