Matteo Sobrero (Astana-Premier Tech) has had a frustrating end to his Giro d'Italia when the young Italian rider was denied a place on the podium of the stage 21 TT after team vehicles delayed him.
The 24-year-old came into the final couple of bends in Milan and ran into some congestion, both riders and team cars. There were three riders all within seconds of each other ahead of him and two cars, from Groupama-FDJ and Team DSM.
As Sobrero, who was 7th in the opening stage TT at the Giro last year, overtook the first rider he caught, he was held up a little. However, when he stuck to his left in the final right hand bend, and the Groupama-FDJ team car driver did the same, the delay was clear to see.
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Sobrero was close to the time of TT winner Filippo Ganna (Ineos Grenadiers) and even closer to 2nd placed Rémi Cavagna (Deceuninck-QuickStep) and he banged on the Groupama-FDJ car to show is annoyance.
He then sprinted in to the finish and clocked 34:02 for the 30.3km TT, just two seconds down in Cavagna. In the end Ganna won the TT in 33:48, Cavagna was 2nd at 12 seconds and Edoardo Affini (Jumbo-Visma) was 3rd at 13 seconds.
Sobrero's time was just two seconds off Cavagna and just one second off Affini. He would definitely have finished at least 3rd on the stage, and pushed Affini into 4th, but for the incident with the team car.
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His incident came after Ganna suffered a back wheel puncture in the TT and was forced to change bikes, but still won, and Cavagna crashed when he completely got a bend wrong at the end of his ride.
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