Sport and Cinema.com

“The Italians are coming!”

On the heels of the Giro d’Italia, we’d like to remind our readers that one of the great sports movies in Hollywood history revolved around the story of a talented young Indiana cyclist’s escape into a world of Italian bicycling.

What a climactic close to the 100th anniversary of this prestigious bike race as Russia’s Denis Menchov survived a fall on a rain-soaked final stage to win the Giro d’Italia in dramatic fashion in Rome on Sunday.

Searching for his third Grand Prix victory and first here, the Rabobank rider seemed to have the world’s second-biggest stage race in his grasp with a 20-second lead before Sunday’s 14.4-kilometer time-trial, but the conditions quickly turned hazardous making Rome’s slippery cobblestones even slicker.

Michele Scarponi of the Diquigiovanni team won the sixth stage of the Giro d’Italia on Thursday as the race crossed into Austria.

Scarponi, who won March’s Tirreno-Adriatico stage race, finished the 248-kilometer (154 mile) stage in five hours, 49 minutes, 55 seconds. Scarponi was part of a five-rider breakaway that led the race for most of the day before the Italian dropped his companions and rode alone across the finish line. Danilo Di Luca of Italy held on to the overall leader’s pink jersey after finishing 36 seconds back.