Stage 2

The road

At the start

HTC hold the first five places

Marco Pinotti has the first maglia rosa and his HTC-Highroad teammates fill the four places behind him on the same time, with RadioShack the nearest anyone else gets at ten seconds. Today is the longest stage of the race: 247 kilometres from Alba to Parma, nearly all of it flat, laid out so the sprinters can have their first argument. Alessandro Petacchi is 37 and racing at home.

How it was won

1. 126 km to go

   Lang alone for 215 kilometres

   Sebastian Lang went at kilometre three of the longest stage of the race and built nearly twenty minutes on a warm, unhurried peloton. Twenty-six kilometres from Parma the cramps win and they roll past him, 215 kilometres after he left.

2. 2At the line

   Petacchi in Parma

   Lampre take the front from Garmin at 700 metres and Alessandro Petacchi, glued to Danilo Hondo's wheel, comes out of it to beat Mark Cavendish. Thirty-seven years old, and the fastest man in Italy is still Italian.

The result