page_title: 2009 Giro d'Italia, Stage 1 to Stage 11
section_title: Stage 11
hierarchical_section_title: 2009 Giro d'Italia, Stage 1 to Stage 11 / Stage 11
caption_attribution_description: English: Mark Cavendish at 2009 Giro d'Italia (stage 11) Italiano: Mark Cavendish al Giro d'Italia 2009 (11ª tappa)
context_page_description: The 2009 Giro d'Italia began on 9 May, with Stage 11 occurring on 20 May. The first stage, like it had been since 2007, was a team time trial, a stage where each member of the team raced together against the clock. Like most cycling Grand Tours do, the beginning of the 2009 Giro included a string of flat stages that were contested by sprinters. These stages were contested by Alessandro Petacchi and Mark Cavendish, among others, with Petacchi in victory becoming one of the only riders to defeat Cavendish in a sprint in the 2009 season.
  At the end of the race's first week and beginning of its second were three hilly medium-mountain stages. These stages took the Giro through Austria and Switzerland before returning to Italy. Each of these stages took more than five hours to complete, and the rain that fell each day combined with the difficulties presented by the numerous ascents and descents made the courses potentially unsafe in the riders' opinion. This opinion was perhaps validated by the life-threatening injuries sustained by Pedro Horrillo in the eighth stage after he crashed while descending a mountain.
context_section_description: 20 May 2009 — Turin to Arenzano, 214 km (133 mi)
  The Passo del Turchino, famous for its use every year in the classic one-day race Milan–San Remo, was visited 19 km (12 mi) from the end of this stage. The climb is not difficult enough to be at all selective, so pre-stage analysis led to expectations that either a mass sprint would occur or a breakaway of riders deep down in the GC would finish first on this stage.
  Astana rider Chris Horner did not start the stage due to a leg injury sustained in a fall in Stage 10, leaving Levi Leipheimer and Lance Armstrong without their usual support rider. At the 56 km (35 mi) mark, Caisse d'Epargne rider Joaquim Rodríguez dropped out after a 9th-place finish in the previous stage.
  A break formed after 65 km (40 mi), including Gustavo César, Cameron Meyer, Dmytro Grabovskyy and Alessandro Donati. Soon after, Levi Leipheimer crashed, but was unhurt. The break was caught, and a solo break was formed by Vladimir Isaichev. Astana drove the peloton up the Turchino, the day's lone climb, with Armstrong leading the descent and race leader Danilo Di Luca somewhat surprisingly coming forward to hold Armstrong's wheel. Some riders tried to escape for victory on the way into Arenzano, but the sprinters' teams worked to keep the field together, and Mark Cavendish took another bunched sprint win over Tyler Farrar and Alessandro Petacchi.
  It was after this stage, on the eve of the Cinque Terre time trial, that Danilo Di Luca gave his first of two positive tests for continuous erythropoiesis receptor activator (CERA), the results of which became public after the Giro was over.
caption: Mark Cavendish popping a champagne bottle on the podium in Arenzano after his victory.
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