Sacha Modolo shows his pleasure at winning his second stage.(Image credit: Courtesy of Polartec-Kometa)
Sacha Modolo soaks himself with victory champagne.(Image credit: Tim de Waele/TDWSport.com)
Sacha Modolo (Lampre-Merida) out-sprints Giacomo Nizzolo (Trek Factory Racing) and Luka Mezgec (Giant-Alpecin).
Sacha Modolo gets the spray the prosecco for a second time this Giro(Image credit: Tim de Waele/TDWSport.com)
Sacha Modolo can smile about it now but at the time it was terrible. Twenty-four hours before his second sprint win in Lugano, the Lampre-Merida man endured the most arduous day of his Giro d'Italia to date, as he and a doughty band of sprinters battled the mighty Mortirolo and the time limit just to stay in the race.
"Me? I was cursing all day long," Modolo quipped when asked how he had made it through Tuesday's tappone. Cruelly, the peloton had to climb the Campo Carlo Magno as soon as the flag was dropped in Pinzolo. As he had anticipated, Modolo was quickly jettisoned out the back.
"I knew that stage would be tough for me," he continued. "I lasted about the first 1,500 metres in the peloton before I was dropped and soon after that a gruppetto formed. We were worried about the time limit and we went very hard – harder than we needed to as it turned out, since the limit ended up being around 38 minutes. I could still feel the effects today, and it was hard to get going on the first climb."
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Barry Ryan is Head of Features at Cyclingnews. He has covered professional cycling since 2010, reporting from the Tour de France, Giro d’Italia and events from Argentina to Japan. His writing has appeared in The Independent, Procycling and Cycling Plus. He is the author of The Ascent: Sean Kelly, Stephen Roche and the Rise of Irish Cycling’s Golden Generation, published by Gill Books.
