Belgian cyclist Wouter Weylandt won the 17th stage of the Spanish Vuelta on Wednesday and Alberto Contador maintained his overall lead.
Second behind the 23-year-old Belgian in the hard-fought bunch sprint was Dane Matti Breschel. Alexandre Usov of Belarus was third.
After 17 stages, Quick Step have won three more stages than any other squad in the race, with Belgian Tom Boonen and Italian world champion Paolo Bettini taking two apiece for the team.
PHOTO: AFP
“Normally I’m Tom’s lead-out man in the sprint here in Spain but today with 20km left to race he said I would have my chance,” Weylandt told reporters after the 148km stage from Zamora.
“I had a bad crash four days ago on a descent, hurting both my knees, but I’ve slowly recovered and today I finally felt at 100 percent again,” he said.
“Bettini and [Italian team mate Matteo] Tosatto did a lot of work for me in the last kilometers and I could just win the sprint,” Weylandt said.
“Winning a stage in my first major Tour and after such an awful early part of the year, full of crashes and minor injuries, is a very special feeling,” he said.
Overall, Contador remained in control of the race for a fifth successive stage.
His Astana team-mate Levi Leipheimer is second, one minute 17 seconds behind, and Carlos Sastre is third at 3:41.
“Today was a day for the sprinters, one for the rest of us to get through,” Contador told Spanish television TVE. “The most important thing was to get through unscathed.”
Contador said his last big target before Sunday’s finish in Madrid would be tomorrow’s 17.1km mountain time trial, where he hopes to seal his overall victory.
“Me and Levi will both race the time trial flat out, with no team orders. I’m looking forward to that stage very much,” he said.
‘SOURCE OF PRIDE’: Newspapers rushed out special editions and the government sent their congratulations as Shohei Ohtani became the first player to enter the 50-50 club Japan reacted with incredulity and pride yesterday after Shohei Ohtani became the first player in Major League Baseball to record 50 home runs and 50 stolen bases in a single season. The Los Angeles Dodgers star from Japan made history with a seventh-inning homer in a 20-4 victory over the Marlins in Miami. “We would like to congratulate him from the bottom of our heart,” top government spokesman Yoshimasa Hayashi told reporters in Tokyo. “We sincerely hope Mr Ohtani, who has already accomplished feat after feat and carved out a new era, will thrive further,” he added. The landmark achievement dominated Japanese morning news
When Wang Tao ran away from home aged 17 to become a professional wrestler, he knew it would be a hard slog to succeed in China’s passionate but underdeveloped scene. Years later, he has endured family disapproval, countless side gigs and thousands of hours of brutal training to become China’s “Belt and Road Champion” — but the struggle is far from over. Despite a promising potential domestic market, the Chinese pro wrestling community has been battling for recognition and financial stability for decades. “I have done all kinds of jobs [on the side]... Because in the end, it is very
No team in the CPBL can surpass the Taipei Dome attendance record set by the CTBC Brothers, except when the Brothers team up with Taiwanese rock band Mayday. A record-high 40,000 fans turned out at the indoor baseball venue on Saturday for Brothers veteran Chou Szu-chi’s first farewell game, which was followed by a mini post-game concert featuring Mayday. This broke the previous CPBL record of 34,506 set by the Brothers in early last month, when K-pop singer Hyuna performed after the game, and the dome’s overall record of 37,890 set in early March, which featured the Brothers and the
With a quivering finger, England Subbuteo veteran Rudi Peterschinigg conceded the free-kick that sent his country’s World Cup quarter-final into extra-time before smashing his plastic goalkeeper on the floor in frustration. In the genteel southern English town of Tunbridge Wells, 300 elite players have gathered to play the game they love. “I won’t say this is the best weekend I’ve ever had in my life, but it’s certainly in the top two,” said Hughie Best, 58, who flew in from Perth, Australia, to compete and commentate at the event. Tunbridge Wells is the “spiritual home” of Subbuteo, which was invented there in 1946