Andrea Vendrame places the acute with 30 km on the run, the last eight alone «The result of courage, madness and enthusiasm. 2021 repays me for so much pain “
/ SAINT LUCIA
Another magic of “Joker”. Three weeks after the acute at the Giro in Bagno di Romagna, Andrea Vendrame exalts himself on the French roads of the Route d’Occitanie. Yes, those same roads that had already seen him as a protagonist in the first years as a pro ‘, see the triumph at Tro-Bro Léon (“little Roubaix”) in 2019. “Stage victory and leader’s jersey at Route Occitanie”, the his post, «A victory fruit of courage, madness and enthusiasm. This year he is repaying me for all the hardships and pains of the past. Thanks Cycling ».
A declaration of love (complete with a heart emoticon) for the sport that he never gave up after very hard moments (from the serious amateur accident in 2016 to the aggression by a motorist in December 2020) and which is now paying off with hits of successes and enviable satisfactions. The 26-year-old from Santa Lucia made his fifth career success, making the inaugural stage of the 45th edition of the Giro d’Occitania his own, raising his arms all alone in Lecaune Les Bains after 156 km: a seven-element escape to the less than 35 km, Vendrame attempts the sortie with the Eritrean Kudus from Astana. Slight advantage, difficult to think of reaching the finish line. The group keeps them in a bain-marie, deeming to postpone the coupling to the final race. But the sprinters have to deal with Vendrame’s ringworm, a little guy who doesn’t give up easily. Who loves to stick to the Garibaldian, throwing the heart over the obstacle. The winner of the pink stage of Bagno di Romagna breaks the delay and gets rid of the company of Kudus at minus 8: now Andrea is all alone against the group. A challenge that the history of cycling has told countless times. Often it was the group, with surgical timing, that broke the dreams of fugitives on the hunt for glory. Sometimes it was the adventurers who succeeded in the goal, seeing the desire of several kilometers before taking shape. At the Route the glory is for Vendrame, who came out in great shape from the Giro: he resists the pace of the group, keeping a treasure of four seconds, which allows him to sign the second success in 2021.
According to the Danish Magnus Cort Nielsen, who has to be satisfied with the sprint of the beaten track, while in third place Jacopo Mosca closes. In the Ag2r pro ‘palmarès it is the fourth success in the land of the Alps: in the first year as pro’, in 2017, he had won the seventh stage of Bretagne; then in 2019 he added the fourth fraction of the Sarthe and the aforementioned Tro-Bro. Before his triumph at the Giro, he had also placed a second place in the pink race in San Martino di Castrozza 2019 (due to mechanical trouble) and an extra-large series of placings. Now two seals in three weeks and the gaze fixed on the Italian flag on 20 June: a possible target? –