2010 Liquigas–Doimo season
The 2010 season for Liquigas–Doimo began in January with the Tour de San Luis and ended in October at the Giro di Lombardia.
The team won two of the season's three Grand Tours, the Giro d'Italia, with Ivan Basso and the Vuelta a España with Vincenzo Nibali.
[9][10][11][12] Pellizotti was supposed to ride the Giro as a co-captain, but he was forcibly sidelined as a result of his announced irregular blood values as part of the UCI's biological passport program.
He had made the finishing selection both days, and was fourth in the overall classification prior to the transfer to Italy, five seconds back of race leader Alexander Vinokourov in the standings.
[15] In the stage 4 team time trial, the squad took a convincing victory, finishing the 32.5 km (20.2 mi) course with six riders together (the seventh, Bodnar, had fallen off the pace only in the final kilometer) in 36'37".
This was a long stage, incorporating unpaved roads near the finish, and happened to be run on a day with very heavy rainfall.
Vinokourov seized the opportunity to take off, and he finished, along with Cadel Evans and Damiano Cunego, sufficiently ahead of Nibali to re-take the pink jersey.
Liquigas did have Dall'Antonia, Kišerlovski, and Agnoli in the break, but Basso and Nibali were notably left behind and ceded 13 minutes to this group.
[22] Using much the same strategy in the Monte Zoncolan climb the next day, Basso was the last rider left out front as the stage neared its finish.
[23] Both squad leaders turned in solid rides in the uphill time trial to Plan de Corones in stage 16, each moving up a place in the general classification.
[24] Stage 18 was the last mass finish in the Giro, and the squad took two of the top ten places in the sprint, with Dall'Antonia coming in third and Sabatini ninth.
Arroyo's group did not cross the finish line until over three minutes had passed, giving Basso the race leadership and putting Nibali in third overall.
Basso, Scarponi, and Evans rode the stage-concluding Passo del Tonale ahead of the other Giro elite, including Nibali.
He finished the stage in 15th place, but easily won the Giro with this performance, gleefully meeting his family inside the Arena di Verona before taking the final pink jersey.
They also won the Fair Play award, avoiding penalty points for minor technical infringements, and were the only squad to have all nine riders complete the race.
Basso hoped to pull a Giro/Tour double, which would have been the first since Marco Pantani in 1998, but was happy simply to return to the race for the first time since finishing second overall in the 2005 edition.
While they lost ten seconds to Andy Schleck and Samuel Sánchez, the result moved Basso up 14 places in the general classification, going from 27th to 13th, and Kreuziger from 12th up to 7th.
[35] In the high mountain stage 14, Basso was just 21st at the finish, but due to attrition of other riders, he again moved back into 10th place overall with this result.
[39] Basso, for his part, had come down with bronchitis upon the Tour's entry to the Pyrenees, ceding time in each of the mountain stages in the final week.
