Tinkoff believes in Petrov for Giro GC

By Jean-François Quénet in Fiorano Modenese

The Tinkoff team seems to have boundless capacity for participating in breaks at the Tour of Italy. Since they finished seventh in the inaugural team time trial, they have hardly missed a breakaway.

In the Trofeo Fuga Gilera classification that is determined by the number of kilometres off the front, three Tinkoff riders occupy all top three spots. Mikhail Ignatiev leads with 314 points ahead of Elio Aggiano with 304. Pavel Brutt, who was away on stage 8 for the third time since the beginning of the Giro, is in third with 303 points. Teammate Evgeni Petrov also included himself in the front group, which was an important move for the evolution of the general classification.

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Brutt tried to anticipate the sprint on the long straight of the Ferrari circuit of Maranello. "I tried to win the stage because this is what I want to do every day," the 25 year-old from St-Petersburg commented.

"I believed I could do it, because everybody was working well in the breakaway, but I wasn't strong enough for winning. Maybe I'll try again tomorrow because the stage arrives 100 meters away from where I now live in Lido di Camaiore. Anyway, today is still a good day for us because Petrov moves up on GC."

Petrov is the designated leader of the Tinkoff team for this Tour of Italy since he's an experienced rider after many years racing for established Italian and Spanish teams (Mapei, Banesto, and Saeco) since he became the U23 world champion in Plouay in 2000 for both road race and time trial.

"Today I wanted to try and win the stage, but it's difficult to make it because the course was very difficult today," Petrov said. "It's a pretty good day anyway. I moved up to 8th position on GC. I will try to go for GC this year, and my other goal is to win a high mountain stage."