Omega Pharma - Quick-Step Cycling Team rider Serge Pauwels, finished in the top 10 at the 182km Giro d'Italia Stage 11 medium mountain stage on Wednesday, a day after arriving in the breakaway of the high mountain Stage 10. Pauwels entered into a breakaway of 20 riders, in a stage where the peloton wouldn't let a single rider go for 60km.
The gap for the break settled around 6 minutes for the maglia rosa group, leaving the stage to be decided by the riders in the break. The first rider to attack was Patrick Gretsch (Argos-Shimano) with less than 30km to go. Then, Ramunas Navardauskas (Garmin-Sharp) and Daniel Oss (BMC Racing Team) attacked the rest of the original break with 20km to go. The duo caught Gretsch with 17.3km to go, and eventually, after much energy trying to hang on to their wheels, Gretsch lost contact.
The two riders rode away, and with about 4km to go Navardauskas dropped Oss. He went on to win solo, with Oss 2nd by a minute. Stefano Pirazzi (Bardiani Valvole), who attacked the chase group in the final kilometers, was 3rd. Pauwels was 8th.
"Our goal was to get Brambilla into the break, but if you want to get someone into a break it is always a team commitment," Pauwels said. "So everybody tried to help him to get into the breakaway. A few times he tried to get into the break but there was too much headwind in the beginning. So, it took a long time until the real break went. Suddenly there as a big group up the road. Cav asked if there was any of us there, and I said no. So he did a sprint, I took his wheel and I could then jump across from behind his back. So, thanks go to him that I made the break today."
"The final was hard and I didn't really feel super all day," Pauwels continued. "I didn't feel super because of the effort of yesterday. So that is why I had to gamble a little bit. Finally two guys went away in the valley, so they stayed away. I especially looked for Di Luca, but he was a little bit two strong for me to follow. I just tried to follow wheels and be smart. I think this was the maximum I could get out of it today, so I'm happy. Two days in a row is not so easy."
Pauwels also submitted an entry for the OPQS Giro Blog, "The Joys of Italy." You can read that blog here: http://www.omegapharma-quickstep.com/en/blog/show/the-joys-of-italy/1201
