All hail the Lord

Redeemed Frigo takes honors for Italy

The Italian contingent in the Tour were still waiting for a stage win, when "Lord" Dario Frigo did the honors, sprinting to victory on the final big mountain stage, reports Cycling Weekly magazine.

THREE days after the French scapegoat for its doping problems, Richard Virenque (Domo), was victorious on Mont Ventoux, his Italian equivalent, Dario Frigo (Tacconi Sport), took the final high mountain stage of the 2002 Tour.

Ever the gentleman -- in Italy they call him "Lord Dario" -- after the race Frigo refused to mention the French fan whose camera lens almost knocked him off in the final meters at Cluses as he outsprinted fellow breakaways Mario Aerts (Lotto) and Giuseppe Guerini (Telekom).

What it meant WITH this year’s winner decided since the Pyrenees, the final Alpine stage has resolved a few more sub-plots of the Tour de France. Another 24 points for Laurent Jalabert picked up on the first two cols of the day means the veteran Frenchman heads into the final hilly stage nearly 100 points clear over second-placed Mario Aerts. A last-minute upset is possible, of course, but it seems almost certain "Jaja the Panda" will be on the Paris podium in the same polka-dot jersey he wore last year. Similarly, ONCE-Eroski are now more than 12 minutes clear of US Postal in the teams competition. Never an objective for the Spanish squad -- directeur sportif Manolo Saiz says he only starts thinking about it in the last three days of the race -- it is still an appropriate reward for the team which has most troubled Armstrong. Italian Ivan Basso has almost the same advantage time-wise over Frenchman Nicolas Vogondy in the best young rider competition. What a contrast to last year’s Tour for the Fassa Bortolo pro, who crashed out in the first week after breaking his collarbone on a rain-soaked descent in the Vosges mountains. The points jersey, however, is another story altogether. Robbie McEwen is admitted by Erik Zabel to be his toughest rival ever for the green maillot, far more so than Stuart O’Grady last year. Although the two are dead equal on points -- after 17 stages! -- McEwen is currently wearing it because he has better placings overall. That particular contest seems destined to go down to the wire in Paris. Then there’s a yellow jersey, but if it was clear a week ago who was going to be taking that one home, as the race moves out of the mountains after six consecutive stages, it’s even clearer now.

Nor did he get angry when repeatedly asked if his first Tour stage win helped him forget the past.

“I only think about pleasant things now,” Frigo courteously answered, but it was no good. The next day the press almost universally raked up the whole story of the drugs that had been found in his suitcase in the 2001 Giro, his dramatic expulsion while lying second overall, the nine-month ban that followed, and the final ironic twist: the bottle the Italian police had found labelled Hemassist in fact contained nothing more illegal than a saline solution.

But if Frigo had been conned into buying some salt water by a man in Milan’s Malpensa airport he had “never seen before or since”, his roar of delight as he crossed the line several bike lengths clear of Aerts was genuine enough.

“This is a real reward for my team, to whom I dedicate this victory,” Frigo insisted. “The Tour de France is too big for me, and the weather too hot, but today the cooler temperatures helped me feel a lot better.”

Stage 17 was just 140 kilometers long, so any break that wanted to stay away over the four cols had to go all out from the gun, and Frigo made his intentions clear by reaching the top of the first one, the Roselend, close to the front in a five-man move. Alongside Frigo, Aerts and Guerini, Basque Roberto Laiseka (Euskaltel-Euskadi) and Jose Enrique Gutierrez (Kelme) made up the quintet, but neither of the two could stay with the break on the next climb, Saisies.

Gutierrez continued to climb alone, while Laiseka was forced to ease up even further and wait for a group of five chasers, timed at 2-50 back, which contained Laurent Jalabert (CSC), busy gobbling up points to reinforce his hold on the King of the Mountains jersey.

The trio continued onwards with Frigo doing most of the work. They were pleased to hear on climb number three, the Aravis, that Jalabert had been dropped from the chasing group. However, the arrival of David Moncoutié (Cofidis) and two more ONCE domestiques, Marcos Serrano and Isidro Nozal, plus two other riders, increasing their chasers to 11, did not give them such cause for satisfaction.

Lance Armstrong’s US Postal team failed to react, though, as they had done on other days when ONCE climbers were away, with George Hincapie, not exactly a mountain man, doing most of the work on the front.

The trio’s lead remained at a relatively comfortable 3-15 over the Moncoutié group and 7-55 on the leader’s peloton. US Postal did not even seem too bothered when Santiago Botero (Kelme) jumped out of Armstrong’s bunch and began to blast up the Colombière, with Gutierrez dropping out of the chasing group ahead to give the Kelme rider a tow up the final section of the climb. Although too late to try and take a third stage, Botero was among the team cars following Moncoutié’s group by the summit of the Colombière, and his move saw him jump from seventh to fourth overall.

With a 3-30 advantage as they began the descent into Cluses, it was clear by that point that either Guerini, Aerts or Frigo would take the stage. But the Italian, dropped briefly on the fast, broad descent, seemed the least strong. Not so. Guerini, the poorest sprinter, launched two attacks in the closing kilometrrs, both of which were closed down when his future Telekom teammate Aerts collaborated with Frigo.

Then when the Belgian led out the sprint, Frigo soared past for an easy victory, his fourth this season in which he has also won on the Col d’Eze in Paris-Nice -- his first race back after the nine-month suspension -- as well as the Tour of Romandy.

After Botero and Michael Boogerd, this was the third surprise stage winner in as many days, in a race where the overall victory is no surprise at all.

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