Alexey Lutsenko grabs much-needed win for Astana as he wins queen stage and overall classification of Giro di Sicilia
Cycling
Astana Qazaqstan Team have deeply struggled throughout 2023, but they've been able to take their first high-quality result. Alexey Lutsenko has won the Giro di Sicilia after winning the queen stage.
The queen stage of the Sicilian race was set to have fireworks, and several riders anticipated the race blowing up. Alexis Guerin, Samuele Zoccarato, Luc Wirtgem, Martin Marcelusi, Erik Fetter, Negasi Haylu Abreha and Bart Lemmen went up the road building a decent breakaway group that would ahve an effect later in the race.
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The race climbed Mount Etna where the peloton lost many riders amidst a very strong pace, but UAE Team Emirates had the numbers. However despite this they weren't able to control the race. In the descent of the climb, which features a couple of explosive hilltops, several attacks took place and the team of the leader Finn Fisher-Black was left to chase with four riders in a small group.
Damiano Caruso, Alexey Lutsenko, Vincenzo Albanese and Simone Pettili attacked and joined several of the riders who were in the breakaway during that period, building a gap to those behind. They were however chasing a trio with Kobe Goossens, Mark Donovan and Gianmarco Garofoli which went up the road earlier on in the descent, causing a chaotic situation.
Alexey Lutsenko was the strongest in the final ascent of the day however, dropping the rest of his competition whilst the riders out front were also dropped. Fisher-Black benefited from the work of UAE to be able to bring in most of the attackers except for the Kazakh. Louis Meintjes attacked close to the summit and got a gap, but that was of over 30 seconds behind Lutsenko, who expanded it in the descent.
The technical roads didn't allow for an organized chance, and Lutsenko rode for what was Astana's second win of the season, conquering the overall classification in the process - a much needed win. Meintjes rode a strong finale to hang on to second place, whilst in the chasing group Vincenzo Albanese won the sprint for third place.
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- You can clearly see the the posture change from slightly sitting to again out of the saddle while changing of gears in the video of the sprintabstractengineer08-11-2026
- He has already beaten Pogi twice in the TDF. the achievement is over. He cannot beat Pogi now and he only has a few years left at the top. Win Giro and compete in the TDF, maximise palmares.abstractengineer08-11-2026
- Just looked again at the photo. Yeah I stand by that. If MS had fallen over in Brands direction I don’t even think she would have hit her. You must be a UCI race commissioner. I’ll be sure to check my sock height should I ever see you on a ride. Looks like everyone else on here sees what I see.mij08-11-2026
- I said looking at the photo it doesn’t appear she deviated. Chill out, not stating my word is the final judgement. Just commenting that based on the photo I don’t see it. And BTW the Dutch coach even said she didn’t impede her.mij08-11-2026
- Blah Blah Blah !frieders308-11-2026
- MS said she was changing gears so that caused her slight deviation. Nothing was intentional.frieders308-11-2026
- How can you use a photo post incident to judge the incident itself (which is not hard to find if you’re prepared to invest the same amount of time in searching as writing that comment? It’s harsh but technically right even though this or worse is not always sanctioned in every race. The two things that went against MS (who unfortunately for her would still have won without making her mistake) are that it was not a bunch sprint where there could have been an overlooked incident or mitigating circumstances explaining a deviation. Everything was focused on just those 2, Schreiber was riding beautifully balanced which made her sudden deviation look unnatural stroke as if it could have been in some part intentional whilst she was slowly drifting ever closer towards the barrier to a point that would have reached obstruction level. In her defence, it might have been the realisation she was heading towards that that made her react suddenly and caused the deviation involuntarily. In any case, congratulations to her for the ride of her life, in people’s minds she will be credited for it.Jumpyjohn07-11-2026
- Good boy Obviously doesn’t need that much help dealing with pressure, as some have suggested. Wiser (and humbler) than many far further along their careers. About offering him the moon, recently someone came up with an explanation of the downfall of a football great (either referring to Maradona or Portuguese Ronaldo) saying it was kind of normal after coming back from the moon, except that others, including some who actually did go to the moon like Armstrong (Neil in case anyone is too switched off to realise) didn’t go through any of the same motions after coming back. A lot of how you deal with situations has less to do with the situation than with your character.Jumpyjohn07-11-2026
- I think that they're not really used to dealing with this type of incident in a cyclocross race, and the situation has been magnified because it was a race for a championship title. It's very unfortunate that the race had to be decided in this way.
santiagobenites07-11-2026 - Seriously why do they keep doing stupid things like this. Its one thing to relegate when the placings are minor, when the action is blatant. But when it is ambiguous, why dont they at least take advice from some higher up to avoid embarrassing themselves. This is similar to the Halland goal when his teammate was clearly offside and interfered in play and VAR gave them the goal. if you dont have evidence you cannot convict. Even for doping they have these rulesabstractengineer07-11-2026
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