i think purito's tactics got him a lot closer at the line than most expected...purito vs. costa on a sprint, rui costa will win...add to it that purito had attacked and counter attacked and then soloed so much of the last lap while costa was sitting behind nibali and valverde, i was surprised purito made it a contest on the sprint...
his tactic was to slow down dramatically and start chatting to throw rui costa's focus off his game, and hopefully get costa to jump as early as possible...costa jumped early enough for rodriguez to latch onto his wheel and get quite a bit of acceleration behind costa...i thought he could've stayed behind costa a bit longer, but then again, i wasn't there!
the interesting question was why nibali did not immediately start soft pedalling once he caught purito w/ about 3km to go...