Cycling’s first major tour of the season is reaching its climax. Alberto Contador leads the Giro d’Italia by 40 seconds with just five days to go. Russian Denis Menshov is just a minute behind the top three. Russia’s Tinkoff team is also making an impress

Russian millionaire Oleg Tinkov, who created and bankrolls the team, was happy with the result.
 
“Oleg was so pleased there was an explosion of happiness. He was banging the inside of the car. We were so happy because winning a stage was what we wanted to do,” Dmitry Konychev, Tinkoff Sport Director, said. 
 
The riders still have 800 kilometres to endure before the end of the race.

Although the event is called he Giro d’Italia it does make a brief excursion into Switzerland, the Italian speaking side of course. On Wednesday the participants are to go past Lake Lugano and head up to Locarno.

Russian hopes lie with team leader Evgenie Petrov. He sits 23rd in the general classification, way down on his seventh place last year. But he says there’s a chance of a stage victory for him on either Friday or Saturday.

With some gruelling stages ahead, Tinkoff have been topping up the calories along with 21 other teams. The question is will they have enough in their legs to end the Italian domination of the Giro in recent years. The last non-Italian to win the Giro was Russian Pavel Tonkov back in 1996.