Guardini wins in Doha Corniche as Renshaw takes overall

Andrea Guardini (Farnese Vini-Neri Sottoli) underlined why he is one of Italian cycling’s most prized young talents with a wonderful sprint victory on the final stage of the Tour of Qatar. The neo-professional took the win ahead of his fellow countryman Francesco Chicchi (Quick Step), while Mark Renshaw (HTC-Highroad) finished safely in the pack and secured the overall victory.

After dominating the flat stages at January’s Tour de Langkawi, Guardini showed that those five wins were no flash in the pan with an intelligent sprint on Doha’s Al Corniche. The 21-year-old found himself boxed in 300 metres from the line but refused to panic. Instead he bided his time to find space when Theo Bos (Rabobank) moved off the barriers and then unleashed a devastating finishing kick.

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While Bos faded to finish in 3rd, Francesco Chicchi was closing fast all the way to the line on the opposite side of the road, but Guardini’s explosive acceleration 100 metres out was enough to see him get the nod in a tight finish over the man who won this stage twelve months ago. Ironically, Guardini revealed afterwards that it was Chicchi himself who had explained the subtleties of the finishing straight to him.

“300 metres out I was still back in 15th or 20th place, but I remembered that Chicchi told me that he was well back 300 metres out last year too, it’s a strange finish,” Guardini said. “I believed until the end, and little by little the riders in front fell away as there was a head wind and I managed to go on the right hand side.”

Guardini also pointed out that he was conscious to launch his sprint on that side of the road. “The finish was slightly curving to the right, so I had a slightly shorter path by going down the right hand side,” he said.

Neither overall winner Mark Renshaw, nor second-placed Heinrich Haussler (Garmin-Cervélo) made any real impact in what was a chaotic final sprint. After Leopard Trek had marshalled the finishes earlier the week in the hope of piloting Daniele Bennati to victory, Friday’s final stage saw the entire bunch arrive together.

Earlier in the stage, however, Renshaw had managed to pick up a bonus second behind the breakaway on each of the intermediate sprints, meaning that he was content to mark his fellow countryman Haussler in the final in order to wrap up the gold jersey.

“We were really hoping a breakaway would get clear,” Renshaw explained. “But those sprints gave me the confidence for the finish to follow Haussler, which was the tactic.”

Renshaw is nominally Mark Cavendish’s lead-out man at HTC-Highroad, but when handed his opportunity to lead in Qatar, he grabbed it with both hands. “I didn’t expect to be in the position of winning the Tour of Qatar at the start of the week,” he said. “Unfortunately Mark Cavendish had his crash [in the prologue] and the focus shifted to me.”

Early chaos

The final stage of the Tour of Qatar had no sooner begun before it was halted again after a crash at the rear of the peloton saw a number of riders take a tumble. As the crash took place in the neutralised zone, the race was stopped to allow the fallers to retake their place in the bunch. Among those to go down were Tom Boonen (Quick Step) and Giovanni Visconti (Farnese Vini-Neri Sottoli), and the Italian champion, already the victim of two crashes earlier in the week, abandoned soon afterwards.

By the first intermediate sprint, the pair had five minutes over the peloton. Renshaw took the sprint for third and he would repeat the feat on the second sprint in Doha, thus opening his lead over Heinrich Haussler to 8 seconds ahead of the finale.

Van Avermaet and Bagdonas continued to battle gamely up front on the nine laps of the 6km course up and down Doha’s Al Corniche, but with the Garmin-Cervélo-led bunch gradually notching up the pace, the must surely have known that theirs was a futile endeavour. With two laps to go, their lead was down a minute, and they were swallowed up soon afterwards as the peloton sped towards the finish.

The final lap saw the first bona fide bunch sprint of the race as it was the first stage in which the wind hadn’t seriously depleted the peloton. From the chaos, it was Guardini who emerged victorious, while Renshaw had already done more than enough to take a deserved overall win.

As ever, the Tour of Qatar has provided some interesting pointers as to who might be the power players at the classics in April, but it may also have been a very significant step forwards in the careers of two fast finishers, Guardini and Renshaw.

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