Cycling has made a comeback in a big way, as two major, butshorter, stage races have been underway this week. In France, the Route du Soleil, the ridetoward the Sun of the annual Paris-Nice competition began last weekend, andwraps up Sunday. In Italy the ridebetween the seas began on Wednesday and continues through the weekend, and intothe new week. The Tirreno-Adriatico hasbrought even more excitement to the cycling world. The Tirreno-Adriatico often serves as a preparation groundfor those aiming for Milan-San Remo glory as well as those riders thinking oftaking home the maglia rosa at the Giro d’Italia in May. But much like Paris-Nice, the other week-longstage race that runs concurrently, the Italian race has prestige in its ownright, with a roll call of winners that would be the envy of any race. This year's race covers 610 miles (982km) intotal, with 36,100 feet (11,000 meters) of elevation. Sunday's Stage five willfinish in Filottrano, as a tribute to Italian rider Michele Scarponi who diedlast year. After four stages, Italian Damiano Caruso, riding for BMC, currentlyis heading the race, followed by Polish rider Michal Kwiatkowski, riding for Team Sky. Sky's GeraintThomas, from Great Britain, was race leader, until he ended up having to yankon a stuck chain, losing precious seconds. The Paris-Nice stage race is no second rate race, it hasequal or greater status to the Italian race, and the choice between the tworemains with teams and riders. TheFrench race often suffers from worse weather, being located farther to thenorth, and that has been the case this year. Saturday's penultimate stage was particularly problematic in thatregard. At the start of the day, therace’s organizer reported that only six of the 22 teams still had their fullcomplement of seven riders in the race. LottoNL-Jumbohad started the day with only three riders. Irish cyclist Dan Martin, who took third place in the same race lastyear, dropped out Saturday, due to weather concerns. With the cold, wet conditions set to continueand with the possibility of snow on the final climb to Valdeblore La Colmiane,in today's final stage, more abandonsare expected. Britain's 25 year old SimonYates took the overall lead today, riding for Australian team Mitchelton-Scott. Yates finished stage seven eight secondsahead of Belgian rider Dylan Teuns (BMC Racing). In the overall standings he took an 11-secondlead over Spain's Ion Izagirre (Bahrain-Merida) with Izagirre's brother, Gorka,in third, 12 seconds behind Yates. In Six Nations Rugby today, Team Italy travels to Wales asthe fourth weekend of competition comes to a close. The Principality Stadium is the site of themeeting between Wales, who started this year's competition strong, bestingScotland, and Italy, who is so far winless this year. Wales, in fact, have beaten Italy for theirlast 11 successive meetings. Wales hasrotated in almost an entire fresh squad as starters for Sunday's game. Italy hopes to take some inspiration in thecontest by the victory of the Italian youth squad against Wales in the Under 20game Friday evening. Italy captainSergio Parisse said as much, and described Cardiff's Principality Stadium as the best place to playRugby in the world. Italy's under-20sclaimed a historic 18-7 win over Wales in Colwyn Bay on Friday. -- Posted By Rex to SR at 3/11/2018 12:02:00 AM -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "omnisport" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/omnisport. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
