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91st Giro d'Italia - Stage 11 Live Coverage 2
Five riders lead with six minutes gap... as attacks go off from the 30 man chase group...

Stage 11 Urbania - Cesena 199 km
1557 CEST - The Fab Five held on to a lead of close to six minutes on the first chase group. Giovanni Visconti, with Bettini not around to help today, sits a further two minutes adrift. Overall runner-up Matthias Russ is not in the Di Luca group either. But Gabriele Bosisio IS! The young Lombard is doing a helluva Giro, isn't he?

1600 CEST - The Fab Five left the town of Novafeltria behind their backs. The "borderline" between the Marche region and Pantani's Romagna is just five kilometres ahead. Alessandro Bertolini, Jussi Veikkanen, Pablo Lastras, Tiziano Dall'Antonia and Laurent Mangel keep working well with each other.

The first chasing group contains over 30 riders, all main true GC contenders (e.g. NOT current Maglia Rosa wearer Giovanni Visconti) included. Baliani and Bosisio have attacked and are up the road. One has to wonder what LPR's tactics are here.

1605 CEST - Fortunato Baliani of CSF-Navigare and ... Gabriele Bosisio attacked as the road kept tilting upwards again. indeed. WHAT'S WRONHG with LPR? It would be dumb for them to let Bosisio to go up the road and take the jersey and have to defend it. Bosisio and Baliani took some out of the Gruppo Di Luca, that is currently driven by ... Bosisio's teammates (!?!?!?) Savoldelli was talking to Di Luca.. we can only guess what the contents of the conversation were.

1608 CEST- Gap update: the breakaway men lead Bosisio and Baliani by five minutes, the "Gruppo Di Luca/Contador/Simoni etc." stays some 35 seconds further behind. Giovanni Visconti trails the frontrunners by 07'46".

Paolo Bettini is having some mechanical problems. Perhaps the same kind of probs that kept him from getting into the "breakaway of the day" earlier, about 42k into the stage. Il Grillo's bike is being fixed.

1614 CEST - Emanuele Sella regained the Di Luca group. LPR stopped dictating the pace, not to the dismay of Gabriele Bosisio, who is making gains (together with Baliani) on basically everyone, and is very, very close to becoming virtual race leader on the road!! The race got to the region border, about 60k from the finish. They are atop the second category Petricara. And in the meantime, 32 more guys joined the Gruppo Di Luca.

Bosisio and Baliani are coming in. Their gap to the five frontunners dropped to nothing more than 01'04". The two guys are expected to join the breakaway in the descent that follows. Thus making the breakaway's chances stronger.

1624 CEST - Giovanni Visconti took advantage of the current "lazy" attitude of the field and made contact again with what we still call the Di Luca group, now containing about 70 riders. But that Bosisio man on the front is still putting his race leadership highly in jeopardy, so who's gonna start and drive the chase now? Quick Step of course!

1628 CEST - Aaaaargh! Here comes the unexpected: Gabriele Bosisio fell, or perhaps had some bike problems. He's currently going as fast as ... any walking man could do, whyyy??

Yep, the TV cameras are showing it clearly: Bosisio was just the next victim of today's bad weather and slippery roads. He fell at a turn. His Maglia Rosa hopes ended up on the tarmac too.

Poor Sella is being tortured by misfortunes these days: the Green jersey wearer had a flat.

1634 CEST - Gap update: Alessandro Bertolini, Jussi Veikkanen, Pablo Lastras, Tiziano Dall'Antonia and Laurent Mangel lead Bosisio by 01'20", with Dell'Antonia's teammate Fortunato Baliani in between (his gap being 40 seconds)

1636 CEST Fortunato Baliani cut his gap to the frontrunners down to just 25 seconds; Bosisio is not making gains on them instead. Finally Liquigas (Bennati is inside the peloton) and Quickstep started the chase.

1639 CEST- Under 50k to go. Combined efforts from QS and the Liqui-men are taking toll on the gap, which just dropped to 05'12". Baliani succeeded in his bid to get across to the leaders. The front sextet is taking on an uncategorized uphill piece. Simon Spilak (Slo -Lampre) punctured and, while in a hurry to get back into the bunch, almost ended up on the grass of a nearby meadow.

Bosisio is in no man's land over a minute back from the lead group.What a difference one turn makes: Gabriele was about to join the front group with many a good chances to wear the Maglia at the end of the stage ... and now he's going nowhere, better he's going to be swallowed up by the field sooner or later. The bunch has all the time to bring him back in the 43 kilometres left.

Only half of the six escapees are working for real, while Jussi Veikkanen wins today's "Milano Expo 2015" sprint (the ancient Intergiro). Bosisio trails them by 02'42". The "oncoming" peloton sits 05'05" behind the breakaway group. Sella is back into the field agian. Two CSF guys (Laverde and Perez Cuapio) helped him.

1649 CEST - Bosisio fell further behind the lead goup. His gap got "updated" to three minutes. For some mysterious reasons Pablo Lastras launched a solo attack and put a few seconds into the other fugitives. What does the Spaniard think he can do all by himself? The accomplished man from Madrid had said that he would be aiming for stage honours today, and seemingly kept his promise. He's not new to prestigious stage victories after all: he's got some in all three Grand Tours.

Paolo Bettini punctured, resulting in a significant time loss to the field - it's not going to be easy task for him to regain the field in such downhill portion, but with some help from his team...car he can do it.

1657 CEST - Pablo Lastras finally resolved to wait for the other fugitives. Bosisio soft pedalling waiting to be caught. Gabriele made the right choice. To keep trying to avoid the unavoidable would have been just a pointless waste of energies. Yet ANOTHER mechanical problem for Bettini. What's wrong with you today, Paolo?

The Liquigas-led peloton are making some gains on the 6-man breakaway. But they should gain 8-9 seconds per kilometre if they want to maintain their hopes to bring'em back. Bertolini doing a journeymans work at the front of the break. The "Team Cars Squad" paced Paolo Bettini into the peloton for the umpteenth time today. Oh, it's a Tinkoff man puncturing now! It must be Vasil Kiryienka, the mighty Belarusian, for one not on attack.

1705 CEST - Watch out, watch out! Riccò attacks!! Il Cobra made a surprise (??) move on roads he knows damn well on the Monteleone climb. Di Luca covered his move first, the Astana duo (Kloeden/Contador) followed. As first result of the move, the "Gruppo Di Luca" is down to 8 riders.

And one of them is ... Gabriele Bosisio, caught by the "peloton" and immediately lifting the pace, working for his team leader Danilo Di Luca. LPR's tactics make sense in this case! But Bosisio, Riccò and the others sat up, and more riders joined them again. (Most of) the peloton is together again with 30k to go.

Giovanni Visconti and Paolo Bettini, as well as Daniele Bennati, lost contact instead. The aformentioned moves made some damage on the frontrunners, taking the gap down to 03'28". Bettini/Visconti follow at 03'51".

1711 CEST - Now it's Colombia's Ardila Cano on the move as the going gets downhill again. Kloeden and Contador proved up to the challenge as Riccò attacked, Levi Leipheimer struggled a bit instead.

Our live coverage of stage 11 continues... Stage 11 Live coverage Part 3

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