QUOTE:
She won't have known much about it, but on a landmark day for his family,
Mark Cavedish's daughter Delilah was present at the end of a race won by her
father for the first ever time. The world champion, still battered and
bruised from that crash on Monday's Stage 3, held off former HTC Highroad
team mate Matt Goss of Orica GreenEdge to take the sprint in Fano, with
Daniele Bennati of RadioShack-Nissan third. Ramunas Navardauskas of
Garmin-Barracuda retains the overall lead.

With a little over 3km still to ride, Lotto-Belisol's Adam Hansen tried to
get clear of the peloton, but with Team Sky leading the bunch, the
Australian's attack was doomed to failure the moment it began, and it was
Team Sky's Ian Stannard who led the race under the flamme rouge before
Geraint Thomas, the final link in the leadout chain, set Cavendish up for
the ninth Giro stage win of his career.

The stage took the peloton 209km from Modena along the straight-as-an-arrow
historic Roman road, the Via Emilia, to Fano on the Adriatic coast with a
couple of excursions inland towards the end to tackle some short ascents.

Early on, four riders got away - the Lotto Belisol pair of Oliver Kaisen,
also in a break on Sunday's Stage 2, and Brian Bulgac, plus Pier Paolo De
Negri of Farnese Vini-ISD Neri and Alessandro De Marchi from Androni
Giocattoli-Venezuela.

With 60km left to ride, the quartet had an advantage of five and a half
minutes over the peloton, a slight tailwind enabling them to clip along at a
brisk 44km an hour, but their lead tumbled after that as a number of teams
looking to set their men up for the sprint today led the chase.

By the time the race entered its closing 25km following the only categorised
climb of the day, De Marchi was left alone out front but he too was swept
up, the peloton splitting then regrouping as at headed up and down those
short ascents reminiscent of the capi of Milan-San Remo.

Some riders had been shelled out the back as the stage headed into the
flatter terrain of the final 10 kilometres, but Cavendish was present
towards the front of the race as the sprinters' teams started to rack up the
pace.

Big names missing, however, included Garmin-Barracuda's Tyler Farrar, who
had been lying second overall after his team dominated yesterday's team time
tria in Verona, as well as BMC Racing's Thor Hushovd.

Today was the third road stage of this year's race and Hushovd's team mate
Taylor Phinney, who lost the maglia rosa to Navardauskas yesterday as he
struggled with the after-effects of the Stage 3 pile-up in Horsens,
maintained his unfortunate record of crashing in each of them.

Off the back of the peloton today with 30km still to ride after that chute
shortly beforehand, the 21-year-old American, today sporting the best young
rider's white jersey, angrily gestured at the RadioShack team car as it
swept past him on an ascent, its wing mirror almost clipping him.

This morning, on a stage where riders were due to sign on at the house where
motor racing legend Enzo Ferrari was born, the rider held responsible for
that stack 200 metres from the end of Monday's Stage 3, Roberto Ferrari of
Androni Giocattoli-Venezuela, had been due to apologise publicly to
Cavendish and Phinney for the injuries they received in that incident.

Speaking to host broadcaster RAI at the start, however, Ferrari revealed
that Cavendish did not want a public apology and instead wanted to meet with
him in private. There was more welcome company for Cavendish at the end of
today's stage, however - girlfriend Peta Todd was waiting with their
month-old daughter Delilah, who had even been issued with her own
accreditation badge by organisers.

http://road.cc/content/news/57985-gi...d-and-daughter

--
Simon Mason