Blazin' Saddles: Giro d'Italia - Job half done for Alberto Contador

The gap by which Alberto Contador won this Giro d'Italia may have been must smaller than we would have expected - thanks to Fabio Aru's back-to-back wins in the Alps that had the Spaniard on the ropes for the first time since that dislocated shoulder sustained in the opening week.

But such was Contador's cushion, the overall victory never looked too much in doubt. And when the maglia rosa struggled on the dirt tracks of the Colle delle Finestre, Astana curiously appeared to back the wrong horse - favouring the gurning Sardinian show pony Aru rather than the in-form thoroughbred Mikel Landa.

Before our focus - like that of Contador - shifts to the Grande Boucle this July, let's take a sideways look back at the final week of what proved to be one of the best Grand Tours in quite some time.

It's no surprise that the final week of the race starts with Tinkoff-Saxo agent provocateur and owner Oleg Tinkov making a joke at Richie Porte's expense after the Team Sky Tasmanian - previously third on GC - withdrew from the race during the second rest day as a result of his injuries and bad form.

The race picks up where it left off with a second stage win for Mikel Landa of Astana, whose victory in the Giro's queen stage - coupled with team-mate Fabio Aru's implosion on the Mortirolo pass - sees the Basque climber rise to second on GC behind compatriot Alberto Contador.

Some say Landa won by nook and by crook - with emphasis on the crookedness - after Astana throw down the hammer after Contador picks up a puncture in the descent ahead of the decisive Mortirolo climb. Contador shows his class by picking off riders one by one as he returns to the front of the race and limits his losses to just 38 seconds on Landa.

Karma of sorts comes when a bike change for Aru following a puncture on the descent of the Mortirolo results in the Italian basking shark riding the last 20km without a water bottle - leading to an array of pain faces unseen in professional cycling since the time Thomas Voeckler used deep heat instead of chamois cream on Alpe d'Huez back in 2004.

Dutchman Steven 'Shoulders' Kruijswijk (LottoNL-Jumbo) and Canadian Ryder 'Rider' Hesjedal (Cannondale-Garmin) rise into the top ten after impressive displays on the Mortirolo. Remember them: it's not the last time they'll feature in the race by a long stretch.

Sprinter Modolo becomes the second rider to double up after Landa with victory in the Swiss town of Lugano following a perfect lead-out by his Lampre-Merida team. The likes of Hansen, Gretsch, Atapuma, Slagter, Gilbert and Paolini all have a pop - but in the end it's a (Roberto, not Michele) Ferrari-powered Modolo who proves the strongest - although it's countryman Giacomo Nizzolo (Trek) who wrests the red jersey from the shoulders of another Italian, Elia Viviani (Team Sky).

A number of provocative commentators send Twitter into a meltdown of innuendo by suggesting the race leader may be packing his bags at the finish...

But, of course, it is merely an allusion to Contador's home from home, which is in the hills above Lake Lugano. The man himself gets a visit from an old friend - although it remains to be seen how his manager will react to seeing the Danish DS he sacked just weeks before the Giro...

Stage 18: Philippe Gilbert (BMC) It's payback time for Contador, whose elephant memory clearly has not forgotten about Astana's perceived dirty tactics ahead of the Mortirolo. So when Landa is caught up in a crash ahead of Monte Ologno, Contador shows the peloton whose boss by soloing clear of the main pack with over 40km remaining. Watching from home, Oleg Tinkov momentarily puts down the champagne and caviar and channels Tyler Hamilton to express his thoughts...

The upshot of Contador's ballsy, principled and proud attack is that Landa has to emulate his fellow Spaniard and attack Monte Ologno in the same vein as Contador's assault on the Mortirolo. That's to say, pretty emphatically. Indeed, the cynics would argue that viewers at home are only now seeing the full potential of Landa let off the leash.

Aru struggles to hold the wheel of Landa once he returns to the main chasing group - and although Contador suffers a chain drop and the ignominy of being caught by Ryder Hesjedal, the maglia rosa extends his lead to over five minutes on GC. His nearest threat is now Landa, mind, and not Aru, who falls adrift by more than six minutes (that's to say, a minute for every kilogram he purportedly lost through dysentery on the eve of the race).

The spoils in Verbania go to Belgian baroudeur Philippe Gilbert, the latest rider to double his tally of stage wins. Attacking with 20km remaining on the final descent, the BMC rider soloes home with enough time to be able to milk the crowds and take it all in. Meanwhile - and jokes aside - both Hesjedal and Kruijswijk impress once again. Had their respective opening week of the race been a little different, they could well be putting the fight to Astana for those podium positions.

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The day after his struggles on the Mortirolo, Aru had told reporters at Lugano that Astana had not given up their bid to win the pink jersey. "For sure we'll try to invent something and sees what happens," he had said quite vaguely.

Well, invent something they did - for Aru is a whole new man as he soloes clear on the third of three back-t0-back Cat.1 climbs to take his first win of the race at Cervinia by 28 seconds over that man Hesjedal, with resurgent Colombia's Rigoberto Uran taking third place.

Behind, Kruijswijk and Spain's Benat Intxausti (Movistar) duel for blue jersey points - but it's Intxausti's team-mate Giovanni Visconti, the last of the day's escapees to be swept up on the final climb, who takes the lead in the KOM competition with one mountain stage remaining.

When Aru attacks, Contador prefers to mark Landa rather than responding - giving the Italian carte blanche to take the win and move back into second overall at the expense of his muzzled Astana team-mate (out of contract at the end of the season, and clearly not favoured as much by Astana team management than his Sicilian counterpart).

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How Aru becomes the fourth rider to win a second stage on the race - as opposed to Landa becoming the first to secure a hat-trick - is the question on everyone's lips. Indeed, when Landa imperiously rides clear on the dirt track of the Colle delle Finestre to find the first major chink in Contador's armour, he looked odds-on to add to his stage haul. In fact, the more pertinent question was whether or not he could add to the 1:30 advantage he held over Contador on the Finestre during the final ascent to Sestrieres.

But instead, Landa is cast as Chris Froome to Aru's Bradley Wiggins when Astana's Italian DC Guiseppe Martinelli tells him to sit up and wait for his team-mate. That said, Landa wasn't getting much joy from fellow escapee Ilnur Zakarin, whom he rather nastily pipped for the Cima Coppi atop the Finestre, whereby ending any potential alliance on the false flat towards the foot of the final climb.

Aru returns with the likes of Hesjedal, Uran and Kruijswijk - and when Zakarin cracks, it's Aru and not Landa who rides off into the Sestriere sunset. The result is the same as the day before, with Aru taking the win ahead of Hesjedal and Uran. By missing out on third place, Landa also lost the chance of taking Visconti's blue jersey by three slender points.

"Well, I won the Cima Coppi, eh?" Landa says to a journalist at the finish. Later he calls a spade a spade in his summation of the day's turning point: "I would have liked to have won the stage but I was stopped by the team car because they had the idea that they could win the Giro [with Aru] and I had to follow orders."

Contador contains his efforts to finish two and a half minutes down, punching the air as he crosses the line to secure the second - or is it third? - Giro d'Italia win of his career.

Meanwhile, from the front of the field to the back, and 'Lamterne Rouge' Marco Coledan (Trek Factory Racing) is fined by the race organisers for waiting near the finish line for Roger Kluge (IAM Cycling) in order to preserve his position as the race's slowest rider. The commissaires were going to slap the Italian with a two-minute penalty but clearly felt that would be counter productive...

Russian tycoon Tinkov celebrates his first Grand Tour victory as manager of Tinkoff-Saxo by dying his hair pink and doing what he does best: open bottles of the fizzy stuff while driving a fast car.

The final processional stage gets spicy when red jersey Nizzolo and Lampre lead-out man Maximiliano Richeze come to blows before the second intermediate sprint in Milan with some Argy bargy and a spot of shoulder barging. Then plans for the expected bunch sprint go awry when practically half the peloton pick up punctures on the street circuit to raise a number of conspiracy theories.

An unexpected victory goes to Belgium's Keisse - a first in the race for misfiring Etixx-QuickStep - who rounds breakaway companion Luke Durbridge to take a win in memory of his good friend and former team-mate Wouter Weylandt.

Contador loses a further nine seconds but wins the Giro by 1:53 over Aru, with Landa taking third place - and angering the whole of Spain for apparently forgetting to remove his cap.

Landa, who hails from Basque Country, is creating a stink in Spain for not taking off his hat during Spanish national anthem on Giro podium— Andrew Hood (@EuroHoody) June 1, 2015

Of course, the last word goes to that man Tinkov, who claims that Contador will go on to win the Tour de France and then, when that's done, will probably reconsider his race programme and ride the Vuelta in a bid to pull off an unprecedented triple. But Oleg, wouldn't you have to pay him another $1m for merely trying? After all, a bet's a bet...

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