Petacchi powers to victory in Pamukkale

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Alessandro Petacchi (Lampre-ISD) is back in business, winning the queen stage in the world heritage site of Pamukkale at the end of a hilly and wet day at the 47th Presidential Tour of Turkey. After losing three bunch sprint finishes to riders of a lesser fame than his, Andrea Guardini, Valentin Iglinskiy and Manuel Belletti successively, Petacchi has shown his form is coming good leading up to the Giro d'Italia, which starts at the end of next week in Turin

As much as it was a surprise to see Petacchi winning the hardest stage of the Turkish event, runner up Bartosz Huzarski also became an unexpected race leader half way into the eight day race. Former turquoise jersey wearer Manuel Belletti (Colnago-CSF) pulled out in the middle of stage 4 with a fever.

Petacchi's achievement was even more remarkable considering he survived a 500m ascent to the Sakar Pass mountain sprint 36km into the stage with the much diminished front group.

"This was a hard stage because of the long climb at the beginning where a big selection was made," Petacchi commented in front of the spectacular terraces of carbonate minerals in Pamukkale. "I still don't know how, but I've managed to stay in the first group. Sometimes I can go well in the climbs. Today I felt very good despite the rain and the energy I spent on the road."

The first acceleration by Canadian champion Will Routley of Spidertech made the race hard from the start. The speed never slowed down and the peloton split into four pieces even before the category 1 climb, where Juan Villegas (Colombia ès Pasion) passed in first position.

At half way, Thibaut Pinot (FDJ) and Andrey Zeits (Astana) went away from the 50-rider front group. At km 115, they were joined by Cameron Wurf (Liquigas-Cannondale), Tom Peterson (Garmin-Cervélo), Alexandre Dyachenko (Astana), Julien Fouchard (Cofidis), Francis Mourey (FDJ) and Rubens Bertogliati (Team Type 1).

The group of eight leaders maintained an advantage of two minutes the first group, while the main peloton was located half an hour behind. The French trio made of Pinot, Mourey and Fouchard was highly motivated but their advance was reduced by the action of the Lampre-ISD team. For the fourth day in a row, the blue and fuchsia team pulled and showed no slackening despite losing out on the stage win three times.

"Only two of my teammates [Aitor Perez Arrieta and Denys Kostyuk] were with me in the front group," Petacchi explained. "At some stage, I told them to stop pacing behind the breakaway riders. But they didn't listen to me and they continued chasing, so they've done a great job. I owe them a big thank you."

After Pinot failed to accompany the last two men away, Fouchard and Svein Tuft, the Canadian from Spidertech who joined the Frenchman in the extremely long downhill on the way to Denizli, FDJ finished the job of catching the leading duo within one kilometre to go.

Anthony Roux (FDJ) accelerated strongly with the idea of putting Wesley Sulzberger into the lead but the uphill sprint was more suitable for Huzarski whose initial intention was to lead out his teammate Jesus Del Nero. The Polish rider of NetApp was passed in-extremis by a powerful Petacchi. However, the time bonus he got for finishing second allocated him the turquoise jersey.

"It's a big surprise to become the leader of this race," Huzarski reacted. "In the last kilometre, I was trying to help my friend Jesus Del Nero. With 600 metres to go, he was on my wheel, looking really fast and really strong, but when I turned back with 300 metres to go, there was a hole, so I just tried to sprint as fast as I could.

"It was a very hard day. It's no shame to be passed at the end by Alessandro Petacchi who has so many sprints in his career before but I've been close to winning. I'm not sure about the coming stages now. I'm not so strong... But I have a strong team. There are hard stages to come and there might be some rain again. I'm an unexpected leader, that's for sure!"

If he hadn't received a penalty of one minute because of irregular behaviour in the sprint of stage 1, Petacchi would have been the race leader before stage 5 from Denizli to Fethiye. He's happy enough to enjoy his good condition and to wait for the right timing to improve his sprinting before the Giro d'Italia. Stage 5 will be the longest of the 47th Presidential Tour of Turkey with 218.6 kilometres.

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