August 22, 2005

Tour of Georgia

The SAUNIER DUVAL – PRODIR team showed us a great spectacle at the Tour of Georgia. It started to be a habit to see the team attacking last week, especially 38 year-old Andrea Tafi, racing for the last time in his professional career. In just the first stage, he attacked and everybody was amazed by his single breakout. On the next day he won the Mountain classification while his teammate Quinziato finished second. The sixth and final stage was pretty calm with a compact peloton for about 100 km when suddenly, one man launched the attack - and guess who? Mister Tafi! He was powering a group of four men for more than 90 km but was caught by the peloton. In the general classification, Marco Pinotti took seventh place. He was third in the fourth stage and sixth in the fifth stage.

Armstrong about Tafi:
"[Tafi] doesn't like it when we go slowly, he was trying to liven things up a little bit," explained Armstrong. "He has been a big champion in our sport. I remember what he has done over the last fifteen years."