Cycling - Giro d'Italia 2000 Part 2

The 2000 Giro d'Italia was the 83rd edition of the Giro d'Italia, one of cycling's Grand Tours. The Giro began with a 4.6 km (3 mi) prologue that navigated through the Italian capital Rome. The race came to a close on June 4 with a mass-start stage that ended in the Italian city of Milan. Twenty teams entered the race that was won by the Italian Stefano Garzelli of the Mercatone Uno-Albacom team. Second and third were the Italians riders Francesco Casagrande and Gilberto Simoni.
In the race's other classifications, Vini Caldirola-Sidermec rider Francesco Casagrande won the mountains classification, Dimitri Konyshev of the Fassa Bortolo team won the points classification, and Française des Jeux rider Fabrizio Guidi won the intergiro classification. Mapei-Quick-Step finished as the winners of the Trofeo Fast Team classification, ranking each of the twenty teams contesting the race by lowest cumulative time. The other team classification, the Trofeo Super Team classification, where the teams' riders are awarded points for placing within the top twenty in each stage and the points are then totaled for each team was also won by Fassa Bortolo.

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The top 3 from this race had, and went on to, have some interesting events involve them. Including, failing a hematocrit test, improving more than 50 places from one year to the next, testing positive for cocaine during the Giro, mentoring one of the sports most notorious dopers of recent times, testing positive for probenecid, motivating one of cycling's greatest sponsors to abandon the sport, forcing a rider off the road (getting disqualified in the process), injuring them so seriously they had to withdraw and never finishing the Giro again. A golden era for Italian cycling!