page_title: 2010 Liquigas–Doimo season
section_title: Giro d'Italia
hierarchical_section_title: 2010 Liquigas–Doimo season / Grand Tours / Giro d'Italia
caption_attribution_description: English: Ivan Basso (ITA) during the warming up for the first stage of the 2009 Vuelta a España at the TT circuit in Assen, the Netherlands. Nederlands: Ivan Basso (ITA) tijdens de warming-up voor de proloog van de Ronde van Spanje 2009 op het TT circuit van Assen.
context_page_description: The 2010 season for Liquigas–Doimo began in January with the Tour de San Luis and ended in October at the Giro di Lombardia. As a UCI ProTour team, they were automatically invited and obliged to send a squad to every event in the ProTour.
  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. Franco Pellizotti was expected to ride both of the season's first two Grand Tours, but he was sidelined by the team after the UCI identified him as having irregular blood values as part of their biological passport program, values possibly indicative of doping. Pellizotti fought the charges, proclaiming his innocence, and was later cleared to return to racing. However, delays in his case meant that almost all of his 2010 season was wiped out.
context_section_description: Liquigas-Doimo entered the Giro with Basso a strong favorite for overall victory. 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. Nibali, who had been planning to captain the squad sent to the partially concurrent Tour of California, took his place in the Giro.
  Sabatini was the best sprinter the team sent to the Giro, and he contested the Giro's first road race stage with the leading sprinters, taking third in the bunch finish. The next day, in another depleted bunch finish, Nibali was eighth. 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. 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". Only two other squads finished in under 37 minutes. Vinokourov's Astana team was 38 seconds off the pace. Garmin–Transitions and Team Saxo Bank, who had also had riders ahead of Nibali in the classification prior to the stage, also finished well back on the day, meaning Nibali took the pink jersey.
  Nibali stayed out of trouble and retained the jersey over the next two days, but was bound for difficulties in stage 7. This was a long stage, incorporating unpaved roads near the finish, and happened to be run on a day with very heavy rainfall. Nibali crashed on the first section of unpaved road, and needed a bike change. 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. Basso also crashed during this stage; the day's results took them from first and second overall down to fifth (Nibali) and eighth (Basso). The favorites finished together over the next three days. Attrition from other riders moved Nibali and Basso up to third and fourth overall, but their time gaps to Vinokourov were unchanged. In stage 11, a 50-rider group broke away from the peloton. This group contained several noteworthy riders, such as youth classification leader (and eventual winner) Richie Porte and squad leaders Carlos Sastre and Bradley Wiggins. 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. This moved them both, along with fellow overall favorites like Evans, Cunego, and Michele Scarponi, out of the top ten with more than ten minutes in deficit to new race leader Porte. Kišerlovski and Agnoli both moved into the top ten, though, at third and fifth, respectively. Liquigas-Doimo, Astana, Acqua & Sapone, and BMC Racing Team had all been mounting a chase of this breakaway group for a time, a chase which brought their advantage from 20 minutes down to 13. The teamwork abruptly stopped when Liquigas-Doimo stopped sending riders to the front of the peloton. The teams blamed each other for the peloton's failure on the day, and there was speculation that Liquigas-Doimo, fielding strong favorites for overall victory, had given away the Giro after the day's result. Basso later admitted that they had made a potentially grave mistake giving this group as much time as they had.
  Stage 12 had the makings of a fairly straightforward sprint stage, but in the last kilometers of the stage, a 10-rider group consisting largely of Giro favorites split off the peloton and finished ahead of them. Nibali and Basso both made this selection, safely finishing sixth and tenth respectively on the day. The squad went to work in stage 14, which went over Monte Grappa. Using rider after rider, until each bonked and fell off the pace, the squad set a pace on the climb that eventually whittled the leading group down to just Nibali, Basso, Evans, and Scarponi. Nibali took the most aggressive descent down the Grappa and soloed to victor
caption: Ivan Basso won the Giro for the second time in his career.
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