T-Mobile on Petacchi: "He fears nobody"

With the Fassa Bortolo train in full motion coming into the final kilometres of yesterday's shortened Stage 15 of the Giro, it seemed there could only be one winner.

Sure enough, Alessandro Petacchi won again, but T-Mobile's Erik Zabel took his best stage place of the tour, finishing second to the La Spezia speedster. However, Zabel's team is realistic when it comes to challenging Petacchi in a flat-line sprint.

"Erik did everything right in the critical phase of the race, and managed to get on Petacchi's back wheel. But in the end it just wasn't enough," said the team's directeur sportif Valerio Piva on the team's website, t-mobile-team.com.

"With Petacchi in this form, there is just no way past him - he is in a class of his own and when the Fassa train is well-oiled, he fears nobody."