A political message written on the roads of the Giro d'Italia on Tuesday insulting Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan has sparked somewhat of an international incident after the images of the painting made their way to Turkey.
The Dutch phrase denigrating Erdogan caused Eurosport Turkey's Giro broadcast to be blocked in that country, according to Tuttobiciweb.
Chaves makes gifts for his teammates
If Esteban Chaves is nervous about being second overall in the Giro d'Italia with two big mountain stages to come, he didn't show it on Thursday as he presented his Orica-GreenEdge teammates with gifts he had made the night before - custom made signs for each with their names.
Chaves finished with maglia rosa Steven Kruijswijk (LottoNl-Jumbo) and third placed Alejandro Valverde (Movistar) to keep the top of the general classification the same heading into stage 19.
“It was always going to be a day for the breakaway, but it also had the potential for two races within one. The race for the stage win and the other with the favourites tightly marking each other," team director Matt White said of stage 18.
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“With the sharp San Maurizio climb just before the finish there was a chance that splits could form, but in the end we didn’t see it.
“We are still in a great position with two massive mountain stages coming up. It’s the ‘Cima Coppi’ tomorrow, which is a big, big climb at nearly 2,800 metres followed by a difficult finish.
“Esteban (Chaves) is used to training in the mountains at high altitude at home in Colombia so hopefully tomorrow will be familiar territory for him.”
Modolo falls short in breakaway
Lampre-Merida's Sacha Modolo was one of the many riders who were disappointed when they were unable to contest for victory in the day-long breakaway on stage 18 of the Giro d'Italia. Modolo came in fourth on the stage behind Etixx-Quickstep's Matteo Trentin, 20 seconds behind.
Modolo was one of 24 riders to make the move just 10km into the 204km stage, and although he was unable to go with Gianluca Brambilla and Moreno Moser (Cannondale) in the Pramartino climb, he made the first chase with Trentin to join Nikias Arndt (Giant-Alpecin) and Ivan Rovny (Tinkoff), but couldn't match the Etixx rider when he set off in pursuit of the leaders.
"Many congrats to Modolo, who performed an impressive race and he was so close to complete a masterpiece," Lampre-Merida director Mario Scirea said. "We won't regret the missed victory, Sacha gave his best until the end and Trentin succeded in exploiting in the best possible way the final part of the course, which was more suitable for him than for Sacha and he could also exploit the presence of his teammate Brambilla."
Rovny makes an ill-timed mistake
Tinkoff's Ivan Rovny was in the main chasing group that was making up ground on stage 18 leaders Gianluca Brambilla (Etixx) and Moreno Moser (Cannondale), but overcooked a turn and lost his momentum on the run-in to the finish.
Director Tristan Hoffman said, “They did a good race, but at the end there were a few others that were a bit stronger. Ivan was together with the winner in the downhill but had to unclip in a corner at the base of the final climb. The others got a gap and he couldn't get back. I'm happy because this was one of the last stages for these guys to try something and they were really focused at the start to make sure they got into the move. Ok, we didn't win but we did our best.”
