page_title: 2009 Giro d'Italia, Stage 1 to Stage 11
section_title: Stage 9
hierarchical_section_title: 2009 Giro d'Italia, Stage 1 to Stage 11 / Stage 9
caption_attribution_description: Maglia Rosa Danilo di Luca during Milano show stage of Giro d'Italia 2009 in Corso Venezia
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: 17 May 2009 — Milan, 165 km (103 mi) (Milano Show 100)
  This stage was a circuit race. The field took 10 laps of a 16 km (9.9 mi) course in Milan (there was a 5 km (3.1 mi) run-in before the circuits began). The course was flat, and the stage figured to be a major sprinters' battle.
  The character of this stage changed drastically after the dramatic injury sustained by Pedro Horrillo the day before brought attention to safety conditions on this and other courses in the Giro. With the course passing over numerous different surfaces, including tram tracks and cobblestones, the peloton collectively protested racing this course, and as such it was neutralized, with everyone receiving the same time as the stage winner and no points were awarded for the points classification as had been planned. There were also parked cars at the side of the road in many places, forcing the riders into narrow tunnels to get through them.
  Originally, the result of the riders' protest was only that the stage times would not count.  The peloton rode the first four laps very slowly, about 20 km/h (12 mph) slower than previous stages, and at the end of the fourth lap, the race stopped altogether as race leader Danilo Di Luca took a microphone to address the crowd and explain why they were riding so slowly. Lance Armstrong, who along with Di Luca had been considered the voice of the peloton in the protest, apologized to the fans for the effect it had on what was supposed to be a grand spectacle, but also contended that it was the correct decision for the peloton to make.
  The pace did eventually pick up, on the last lap, and the finish was contested in a bunched sprint, won by Mark Cavendish.
caption: Danilo Di Luca in the pink jersey during the Milan city stage.
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