Savoldelli perfect in pink

A 119 km parade stage home to Milan, Sunday's pancake-flat Stage 20 -- raced under a sparkling Italian sky -- was all about savouring a three-week race survived.

The first hour of racing was buckled at a yawning 27.8 kmh average, riders spending more time shaking hands and slapping backs than conjuring race tactics.

There was, of course, one last sprint fisticuff to win, Sunday's finish line positioned on Milan's Corso Venezia after 13 trips on a 4.8-km criterium-style circuit course.

The pace in the bunch ratcheted progressively into overdrive with each ensuing lap, the peloton under the constant policing of the Fassa Bortolo bullet train.

Despite a flurry of late-race solo goes -- notably a show of gumption from Aussie Matthew White (Cofidis) -- Fassa Bortolo closed every breakaway door before issuing Alessandro Petacchi a silver-platter sprint in the final kilometre.

With most of the Grio's sprint speed demons (Robbie McEwen, Baden Cooke, Jaan Kirsipuu, Stuart O'Grady) long gone from the race -- all turning in their "I quit" cards before the race's super vertical Dolomite stages -- Petacchi's primary challenger Sunday was German T-Mobile motor Erik Zabel.

Zabel, a six-time best sprinter at the Tour de France, put up a fight but couldn't muster a passing effort, the 34-year-old bested by a bike length by Petacchi, who sealed his fourth stage win of the race.

Protected to perfection by his Discovery Channel team Sunday, overall race leader Paolo Savoldelli cruised home at the front of the bunch to officially win the Giro d'Italia, his second win at the three-week race after his 2002 triumph.

Pummeled race-long by a brash bravado of attacks from the likes of Gilberto Simoni (Giro winner in 2001 and 2003), Danilo Di Luca and Venezuelan upstart Jose Rujano, Savoldelli nonetheless rode a measured race, managing with aplomb the rigors of one of the closest-contested Giro's in history.

Simoni sealed second on the overall podium, just 28 sec adrift of Savoldelli with Rujano third at 45 sec.

"I never let myself give in to panic," Savoldelli said Saturday after the Giro's penultimate -- and behemoth -- mountain stage to Sestriere.

Wracked by a string of major injuries and illness since last winning the Giro in 2002, Savoldelli has become a sage of cycling, the Italian broadcasting a serene, near Zen-like demeanor throughout the three-week Giro.

"In another time, I might have cracked [under the pressure of Stage 19's mountain attacks]," Savoldelli said in French sports daily L'Equipe.

"But the past two years have taught me everything. I rode intelligently and sealed the overall victory because I kept my nerve."