Race Overview
After the opening stage bunch sprint was won by Mario Cipollini, the second stage, a 19km individual time trial that was half flat, half hillclimb, was dominated by Rominger who put almost a full minute into the other contenders despite the short distance. He would not relinquish the lead for the rest of the race. The route was, at the time, widely reported as the toughest Grand Tour route in recent memory and featured a relative lack of flat sprint stages when compared to other Grand Tours. Cipollini, Minali and Svorada shared between them the spoils of the rare bunch sprints. Stage 4 was the first road stage to produce time gaps, on a sawtooth profile hilly circuit in the town of Loreto. Rominger attacked in the final kilometer to take his second stage win and extend his overall lead.
Over the mountain stages of the second week Rominger kept the Gewiss team leaders in check in the mountains, not initiating attacks of his own, but closely marking Ugrumov and Berzin, before dropping them on the final meters of each mountain finish. The Mapei team controlled proceedings and allowed breakaways to take mountaintop stage wins. Winners included climbers Lale Cubino, Enrico Zaina, Serguei Outschakov and twice Pascal Richard. Rominger's situation was helped by the infighting between Gewiss leaders Ugrumov and Berzin who rode against each other instead of ganging up on the Mapei squad, for which they attracted public criticism by their team manager Emanuele Bombini. Meanwhile, with dominant performances in the two long time trials of over 40 kilometers each (one flat, one mountain), Rominger further padded his lead by several minutes.
On the penultimate day's stage, not wishing to take any risks in the tricky descent in torrential rain, Rominger allowed Berzin to escape to take the stage win on his 25th birthday and vault to 2nd overall. Mariano Piccoli took the Mountains classification, with Rominger taking the Overall, Points and Intergiro classifications along with 4 stage wins and wearing the pink leader's jersey after every stage but the first. Berzin and Ugrumov rounded out the podium.
Read more about this topic: 1995 Giro D'Italia
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