GIRO D'ITALIA (2)

After three weeks, 21 stages and roughly 3,500km of racing, Ivan Basso won this year's Giro d'Italia by a margin of just 111 seconds. It was the Italian's second victory in his home Grand Tour, but almost certainly a more satisfying one. In 2006 he simply blew his rivals away, leading one of them to say that he was not from this planet. That accusation acquired momentum when Basso was withdrawn at the last moment from the 2007 Tour de France - which he was favourite to win - after being caught up in the Spanish blood-doping inquiry Operation Puerto. After serving a 2-year suspension, he returned to the peleton at the beginning of 2009, but was not one of the top contenders at last year's Giro.

This year, however, was different, and he was clearly the strongest man in the high mountains of the final week. He also had the benefit of a powerful Liquigas team that not only convincingly won the team time-trial, but also managed to position more men around him when the gradients began to hurt. Once again, it underlined the importance in cycling of a supportive team; Basso still had to finish the job, but he wouldn't have been able to do it without their first having put him in the right position.

My earlier prediction that it would be Carlos Sastre turned out to be hopelessly wrong, as the Spaniard starting going backwards as soon as I had named him. Neither he nor his team were as strong as they needed to be. Neither could world champion Cadel Evans's titanic efforts make up for the fact that his BMC team is not even up to Pro Tour standard, but has a second-tier continental licence.

So, well done Basso. Here is my prediction for this year's Tour de France. It won't be Sastre or Evans, since they don't have the team. It won't be Basso, since it is almost impossible to win the Giro and the Tour in the same year (though another Liquigas rider might make the top five). It won't be Lance Armstrong, he is simply too old. It will instead boil down to a straight fight between two men not at the Giro, Astana's Alberto Contador and Saxo Bank's Andy Schleck. My heart is with Schleck, but my head says Contador.

Walter Blotscher