As usual, Oscar Freire takes a win he wasn't confident of, and wasn't expected to take. We know he'll be there, we know he'll be a contender, but the likes of Petacchi and McEwen will have either (a) more power for longer or (b) more acceleration. Well it looked like McEwen would nail it through the last corner but it was just too far to the line; and yet too short for Petacchi to wind it up. So Oscar launched, gapped and won. That's stage 1, Tirreno-Adriatico.
The top 20 on the stage and on GC:
1 Oscar Freire Gomez (Spa) Rabobank 4.09.51
2 Alessandro Petacchi (Ita) Team Milram 0.04
3 Jose Joaquin Rojas Gil (Spa) Caisse d'Epargne 0.06
4 Mikhail Ignatiev (Rus) Tinkoff Credit Systems 0.07
5 Yuriy Krivtsov (Ukr) AG2r - La Mondiale 0.08
6 Markus Fothen (Ger) Gerolsteiner 0.09
7 Erik Zabel (Ger) Team Milram 0.10
8 Baden Cooke (Aus) Barloworld
9 Sébastien Chavanel (Fra) Française des Jeux
10 Gerald Ciolek (Ger) Team High Road
11 Robbie McEwen (Aus) Silence - Lotto
12 Matti Breschel (Den) Team CSC
13 Tiziano dall'Antonia (Ita) CSF Group Navigare
14 Ruben Perez Moreno (Spa) Euskaltel - Euskadi
15 Murilo Fischer (Bra) Liquigas
16 Francesco Chicchi (Ita) Liquigas
17 Christopher Sutton (Aus) Slipstream Chipotle Presented By H30
18 Pedro Horrillo Munoz (Spa) Rabobank
19 Heinrich Haussler (Ger) Gerolsteiner
20 Danilo Hondo (Ita) Serramenti PVC Diquigiovanni-Androni Giocattoli
That's 4 Aussies in the sprint, if you count Haussler.
