Stage 13 – Savona to Cervere, 121km
Stage profile: The first 30km or so of this short stage are uncomfortably steep for the sprinters, but thereafter it should all come back together for a bunch sprint.
Top three: 1. Mark Cavendish (Sky), 2. Alexander Kristoff (Katusha), 3. Mark Renshaw (Rabobank).
One final race for McEwen (image courtesy of GreenEDGE)
This Sunday, May 20th, Robbie McEwen will end his road racing career on the last stage of the Tour of California, in front of LA’s Staples Center. I, for one, am hoping that he will end it with his arms raised as he wins his final sprint finish. I wonder if he ever imagined that would be where he would retire, one month off 40, when he was growing up in Brisbane, Queensland. I doubt it. But one thing he probably was sure of was that whatever he did, he would be a success.
Sprinters really don’t intrigue me that much but I’ve always had a soft spot for Robbie McEwen. When I first starting watching cycling during the 2004 Tour de France, I had no idea what was going on, but I did know that what Robbie McEwen could do in the last few hundred metres of a race was something special. Just how special, I didn’t realise until I began to learn what sprinting was all about.