There was a lot of discussion about an incident on today’s stage of the Giro d’Italia when the Astana and Katusha teams went on the attack, after race leader Alberto Contador (Tinkoff-Saxo) had punctured.
About 20 kilometres before the start of the toughest climb of the day, the Mortirolo, Contador punctured. The Spaniard dropped back to get a rear wheel change from Ivan Basso, and the two other teams decided to take advantage of his misfortune.
Contador was forced to chase back to the group containing the other GC contenders, and would eventually pass and drop his nearest rival, Fabio Aru (Astana).
Katusha directeur sportif Dimitri Konychev claimed afterwards that he was unaware of Contador having punctured. The Astana team of Aru and stage winner Mikel Landa were more honest in admitting that they had tried to take advantage of his moment of misfortune.
In the press conference aftewards, Landa said: “We went hard on the flat before the Mortirolo to make it hard for Contador, so that he might be a little more tired when he caught us. We saw that Contador had a problem, and we tried to take advantage of it. I believe that we caused him some pain to catch us. Katusha broke up the group and went full gas, and we collaborated with them.”
Contador ended up increasing his overall lead over Aru, so the tactic backfired. He leads Mikel Landa by 4:02, with his Astana teammate Fabio Aru slipping to third at 4:52.
This is not very sportsman like behavior. They will probably regret it later