BMC Racing Team’s Marco Pinotti won Saturday’s 24.1 kilometer individual time trial at the Tour of Austria while teammate Steve Morabito moved from third to second overall with one day of the race to go.
Victory Is A Good Boost
Pinotti averaged 52.2 kilometers per hour on his BMC timemachine TM01 on the flat, out-and-back course to beat Kristof Vandewalle (Omega Pharma-Quick Step) by 32 seconds. The result shot the five-time Italian national time trial champion from 12th to sixth in the overall standings while Morabito finished 18th to move ahead of Danilo Di Luca (Aqua & Sapone). Jakob Fuglsang (RadioShack-Nissan) finished 12th on the stage and takes a 1:24 lead over Morabito into Sunday’s final 122 km road race. Pinotti scored his second victory of the season, adding to his win in the final time trial of the Giro d’Italia. “The goal here was to win,” he said. “I’m only disappointed with the overall because we started with one less rider and if Johann Tschopp was here, we might have played it differently the other day. But second and sixth (overall) is good and it’s a good boost for the next races and my future goals.” Tschopp, runner-up at this race in 2005, did not start following the birth of his second son a few days before the race.
