The Barloworld team sealed the overall victory in the Ster Elektrotoer on Saturday, with Enrico Gasparotto rolling in with the bunch sprint to maintain his 17 second lead in the general classification over Tinkoff's Vasili Kiryienka. The team of Claudio Corti not only protected Gasparotto's lead, but placed second on the final stage with South African sprinter Robert Hunter behind stage five winner Mark Cavendish (High Road).
After serving mainly as a domestique for the Liquigas team in 2007, Gasparotto has began showing the consistency of a stage racer when he placed second in Tirreno-Adriatico and third in the Driedaagse De Panne-Koksijde earlier this year. After being considered a pure sprinter at the beginning of his career, the Italian has now added his first stage race victory to his palmares.
Gasparotto will now head to the Italian National championships before taking a well deserved break. Having raced the Giro d'Italia, he will not take part in the Tour de France.
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