page_title: 2007 Giro d'Italia
section_title: Race overview
hierarchical_section_title: 2007 Giro d'Italia / Race overview
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Andy Schleck beim Einzelzeitfahren der Deutschland Tour 2006
context_page_description: The 2007 Giro d'Italia was the 90th running of the Giro d'Italia, one of cycling's Grand Tours. It took place from 12 May to 3 June 2007. The race began in Sardinia and finished in Milan, and featured five mountain top finishes, of which one was an individual time trial. The race also visited France and Austria in three stages.
  Danilo Di Luca of the Liquigas team won the race, with Andy Schleck from Team CSC and Eddy Mazzoleni from Astana rounding out the podium. Schleck also won the youth classification, which featured in the Giro for the first time since 1994. Di Luca's team dominated the overall classification, holding the race leader's pink jersey for 17 of the 21 stages.
  During the race, Alessandro Petacchi tested positive for elevated levels of salbutamol at a doping control on 23 May, after winning Stage 11. Petacchi has a medical exemption to use salbutamol in the treatment of asthma, but the concentration of the drug in his urine sample from this control was above the therapeutically accepted level.
context_section_description: The Giro began with a team time trial on the island of Sardinia. The winning team was Liquigas, but due to unusual stage-ending tactics, it was Enrico Gasparotto and not team leader Danilo Di Luca who took the first pink jersey. Gasparotto faced intense questioning from his teammates and the media after not yielding first position to his team's captain, as is usual practice in a team time trial. Gasparotto yielded the jersey to Di Luca after stage 2, when Di Luca finished higher-placed in the mass finish, but took it back again after stage 3 when he contested the sprint and finished eighth. Finally, after stage 4, the six-way tie involving the Liquigas riders who finished together in the team time trial was broken, as Di Luca won the stage into Montevergine and took the pink jersey again.
  Di Luca held the race lead until the conclusion of stage 6, which was decided by a breakaway. Luis Felipe Laverde and Marco Pinotti were the last members of a five-man morning breakaway still together at the finish. Since Pinotti started the day better-placed in the overall classification and became the new race leader because of their time gap over the peloton, he allowed Laverde to take the stage win. Laverde took the green jersey as mountains classification leader after the stage. The next three stages were flat and contested among sprinters and breakaways. This meant Pinotti was able to maintain his race lead with little difficulty, until stage 10, the Giro's next intermediate stage. The race's overall contenders showed themselves on this stage, with Leonardo Piepoli putting in a decisive attack 5 km (3.1 mi) from the summit of the Santuario Nostra Signora della Guardia to claim victory by 19 seconds over Di Luca. Pinotti finished more than four minutes back, and surrendered the pink jersey to Di Luca's teammate Andrea Noè, who was tenth on the stage. At age 38, Noè was the oldest rider in the Giro and the oldest ever to lead a Grand Tour. Di Luca took the green jersey after this stage, his second stint in the maglia verde to go along with his two in pink. Team CSC's Andy Schleck took the white jersey after this stage by finishing third, after Di Luca passed him for second in the final kilometer.
  Stage 12 into Briançon in France was the Giro's first high mountain stage, and it shook up the standings for the final time. Di Luca took the stage win, twice attacking from an elite group of five that had made the climb together. As Noè finished nearly ten minutes behind, Di Luca took the pink jersey for a third time, while still holding the green jersey. As Di Luca concentrated on winning the race overall, Piepoli took the green jersey after stage 15, the race's queen stage, topping two of that stage's climbs in first position. His lead in the mountains classification quickly became unassailable, and he won the jersey in Milan. It was also on this stage that Astana's Eddy Mazzoleni distinguished himself as a podium contender, taking a minute and a half out of Di Luca to move into second overall. Schleck lost time to Di Luca and Mazzoleni, but gained time over other riders in the top of the overall standings and stood third overall.
  The last minor change to the top of the overall standings took place during stage 17, to Monte Zoncolan. The stage itself was conquered by the Saunier Duval–Prodir duo of Gilberto Simoni and Piepoli. Since the climb had personal significance for Simoni, having won a stage there four years earlier, his teammate allowed him to cross the line first. Schleck, for his part, was third, just seven seconds back, and gained over two minutes against Mazzoleni to move up to the second step of the podium. Mazzoleni fell to fifth on this stage, but returned to the podium after the race's final time trial. Mazzoleni's teammate Paolo Savoldelli won the stage by a comfortable margin, but Mazzoleni took back nearly all the time he had lost on the Zoncolan stage and finished the race third overall. Di Luca was not seriously challenged after taking the race lead in stage 12, and comfortably won the Giro in Milan with a two-minute
caption: This Giro was the first Grand Tour in the career of Andy Schleck, who finished second overall.
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