[jyl]

Tirreno-Adriatico 2013 Stage 6, yesterday. Well worth going to YouTube and watching the 1h30m video of the last 50k, posted by one Tom [correction] Manning. There is a climb, not short, into and through a coastal Italian hill town, that starts hard and gets worse and worse, reaching a 27% grade, bad road surface, raining, at the tail end of a wet cold 250k stage the racers were sent up this climb three times. A third of the peloton abandoned. The best climbers in the world, riding special 36 x 28 gearing, were laboring up, zigzagging, getting off and walking. Cavendish abandoned before the first time up. Cancellara cracked. Fromme cracked. Contador almost cracked. Nibali and Sagan and Rodriguez took half a minute out of the next group. Awesome sufferfest. The race organizer apologized afterwards.