No rest for the weary.
Two days after he finished the three long weeks of the Giro d’Italia, the Liquigas team’s Daniele Bennati is slated to start Tuesday morning at Commerce Bank’s Lehigh Valley Classic in Allentown. The Italian sprinter finished the Giro in 70th place overall in Milan Sunday, after an individual time trial in which he placed seventh. He won three of the Giro’s 21 stages and points jersey in the grand tour.
The Lehigh Valley Classic is the first of three races called the Commerce Bank Triple Crown of Cycling. Along with the Allentown race, the other races are in Reading on Thursday and in Philadelphia on Sunday. The Allentown and Reading races are slated to begin at 1 p.m. and end about 4 p.m. The Philadelphia International Championship race begins at 9:30 a.m. Sunday and is expected to end about 2:30 p.m.
Liquigas is one of four teams competing in the Pennsylvania races that are slated to appear next month in the Tour de France. They will be joined by U.S. domestic pro teams, including Wayne, Pa.-based Rite Aid, and professional squads from Poland, Ireland, Canada, Germany and Mexico.
Along with Bennati, cyclists to watch include: Swede Magnus Backstedt, the former Paris-Roubaix winner racing for the Colorado-based Slipstream team; German Bernard Eisel, racing for the High Road team, who dominated the triple crown last year; and the Cuban missile Ivan Dominguez, racing for the domestic Toyota-United team. Scott Zwizanski, of Dowingtown, will be racing for the Bissell Pro team.
The Lehigh Valley race is being held for the first time this year, after years of it being held in Lancaster. The switch to Allentown was announced late last fall after race organizer, the Norristown-based Pro Cycling Tour sought to shift the race back to Tuesday afternoon. It had been held on Sunday afternoon in Lancaster for two years.
