Di Luca aces Amstel Gold after Boogerd’s dilemma

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By John Wilcockson

Photo: Graham Watson

You can’t help but feel the anguish of Michael Boogerd. Although he did win the Amstel Gold Race in 1999, by narrowly outsprinting Lance Armstrong, Rabobank’s lanky Dutchman has since been the runner-up no less than four times. The cruelest of those second places came on Sunday, when the latest man to beat him to the line was Danilo Di Luca, the revitalized Liquigas-Bianchi team leader who last week won the Tour of the Basque Country.

Strange as it may seem, the problem Boogerd had this time was the very strength of his Rabobank team. Perhaps a different team would have put all their eggs into the Boogerd basket, but Rabobank wants to win too much on its home turf. Besides Boogerd, Rabobank had three other favorites. World champion Oscar Freire was itching for victory, as were the two (unrelated ) Dekkers, Erik and Thomas. But all four of these men were somewhat stymied by their Dutch teammate Karsten Kroon, who worked his way into a key four-man breakaway on the Kruisberg, the 27th of the day’s 31 climbs, with 20km to go.

“I was feeling great all day,” Boogerd said after the race. “At first, we didn’t want to take any risks on the wet roads, which were very dangerous in the corners. I wanted to attack, but there wasn’t much I could do with Kroon in the break.”

Boogerd launches his attack on the Cauberg

Photo: Graham Watson

Besides Kroon, also up front over the final hills on a day of thick fog were fellow Dutchman Marc Lotz (Quick Step), Spaniard David Etxebarria (Liberty Seguros), and the German Steffen Wesemann (T-Mobile) — who had already been off the front of the race chasing an earlier break for more than an hour. This quartet had a tenuous lead of 30 seconds over the penultimate climb, the 20-percent Keutenberg with 11km to go, where Boogerd, Di Luca, eventual third-place finisher Mirko Celestino (Domina Vacanze), Alejandro Valverde (Illes Balears) and defending champion Davide Rebellin (Gerolsteiner) emerged from a rapidly disintegrating chase group.

The efforts of these “big guns” cut the gap to the four leaders to 15 seconds with 8km left, and 10 seconds entering the final 5km. Etxebarria had tried a few times to get clear of the other three leaders on the false flat after the Keutenberg, but Kroon chased him down every time.

Meanwhile, Lotz was just following Kroon, hoping that his four Quick Step teammates behind (including three-time World Cup champion Paolo Bettini) would have some strength left for the finale. As for Wesemann, whose T-Mobile team is still without a single victory this year, he said he was hoping the four could stay away “as fourth place is better than nothing. I only had one teammate, [Matthias] Kessler, in the group behind.”

With these strange dynamics, it was no wonder that the four leaders were caught 4km from the finish, just as they began the long. snaking descent of the Sibbergrubbe into the streets of Valkenberg. Their capture by the small chase group came at the same time as another 25 men tagged on to the back to make a 40-strong lead group going in to the finale. It was clear that this 40th edition of the Amstel Gold Race was going to end in a field sprint.

But the Amstel finish is no longer the flat one it was six years ago in the city of Maastricht when Boogerd won this race from Armstrong. It’s now on the summit of the Cauberg, a hill that climbs through 200 vertical feet in 750 meters, with a mean grade of 8 percent and a steepest pitch of 14 percent 350 meters from the line.

With the Kroon card a dud, and with Boogerd stymied in his hopes of making an earlier attack, Rabobank’s tactic was now to go with Freire’s sprint. But on a steep climb? Maybe it was a smart decision, because the Spaniard did win three stages of Tirreno-Adriatico a month ago, on finishes that were similar (but not so steep) as the Cauberg.

Freire

Photo: Graham Watson

Having chosen this tactic, Rabobank delegated Erik Dekker to set the pace on the approaches to the final climb, a job he did with skill and strength. Then it was Boogerd’s turn to play the team role. “I knew I had to lead it out for Oscar,” said Boogerd, who did just that on the first slopes of the Cauberg. “But then I had this intuition that Freire wasn’t on my wheel anymore.”

He was right. The world champion was struggling. But now Boogerd was in a dilemma. He was at the front already, not the best place to be to make a sprint against such formidable uphill finish specialists as the Italians Di Luca, Rebellin and Celestino. So what should he do?

“If I’d done my own sprint, I would have taken the wheel of Di Luca, but I was already at the front,” Boogerd continued, “so I didn’t have any choice except try to win from the front.”

It was a valiant effort, similar to the sprint Boogerd made at the Amstel two years ago to take second, behind solo winner Alex Vinokourov and ahead of Di Luca.

“Were you thinking of that sprint two years ago?” Di Luca was asked by a journalist. “Yes,” replied the Italian. “It was the same thing happened. Boogerd went with 300 meters still to go, and I knew I had to make a very, very long sprint.”

It was a sprint that Di Luca lost in 2003; but, on his own admission, he is in much better shape this spring. “I saw I had very good condition in the Basque Country, so I was confident I could win today.”

And he did, coming past Boogerd in the final, flatter 100 meters to take his first major classic win since the Tour of Lombardy four years ago. Boogerd stayed strong to take another second place, while Celestino made a late burst to overtake Rebellin, with Spaniard Miguel Martin Perdiguero (Phonak) coming through to take fifth.

Etxebarria on the attack

Photo: Graham Watson

Other finishes of note were the eighth place of Etxebarria, a fine performance after his big efforts made in the breakaway group, and the 12th place (only two spots behind Freire) of former world champion Igor Astarloa (Barloworld). The Spaniard was doing only his third race of the season after breaking his left wrist in the Classic Haribo race just two months ago.

With his Amstel Gold Race and Basque Country victories, Di Luca has moved up to third place in the UCI ProTour rankings. With 91 total points, the resurgent Italian has a two-point deficit on second-place Alessandro Petacchi, and is 21 points behind current leader Tom Boonen. As neither of these two is racing at the Flèche Wallonne or Liège-Bastogne-Liège, Di Luca looks set to take over the top spot by the end of the week.

Photo: Graham Watson

“The ProTour is one of my big goals for the season,” confirmed Di Luca, who in a two-week stretch has gone from “over the hill” to “on top of the world.”

“I really want to win at Liège next Sunday,” he said, “For me, it is the most prestigious and most beautiful classic of all. It’s always been my dream to win it, and it’s well within my capabilities now.”

No one would deny that. Not even Michael Boogerd – who, uh, uh, has twice finished second at Liège in the past six years.Full Results

RACE NOTES
There were only three North Americans in Sunday’s race, all on Discovery Channel. George Hincapie ran out of steam in the final hour to fade to 67th place, 3:20 down; Ryder Hesjedal came across the line a quarter-hour behind the winner, but like teammate Patrick McCarty, who finished another five minutes later, he was not given a time or position. Only 100 riders officially finished the race, with those like Hesjedal and McCarty arriving outside the UCI’s arbitrary time limit.

There were no live TV images of the race until the last kilometer because the communications helicopter were not able to fly, and so there was no signal between the TV motorcycles and the satellite dishes.1. Danilo Di Luca (I), Liquigas
2. Michael Boogerd (Nl), Rabobank
3. Mirko Celestino (I), Domina Vacanze
4. Davide Rebellin (I), Gerolsteiner
5. Miguel Angel Martin Perdiguero (Sp), Phonak
6. Patrik Sinkewitz (G), QuickStep
7. Bjorn Leukemans (B), Davitamon-Lotto
8. David Etxebarria Alkorta (Sp), Liberty Seguros
9. Jerome Pineau (F), Bouygues Telecom
10. Oscar Freire Gomez (Sp), Rabobank
FullResults

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Results

Results – 40th Amstel Gold Race
1. Danilo Di Luca (I), Liquigas, 6:21:07