While some other elite sprinters, including Robbie McEwen, bailed out of the Giro d’Italia when the routes went uphill, Andre Greipel of American team High Road stuck with it.

The payoff: a presitigious stage win in a grand tour.

Greipel won Wednesday in Stage 17 of the Giro d’Italia, crossing the finishing line in Locarno, Switzerland, ahead of teammate Mark Cavendish after a 146 kilometer trek from Sondrio.

According to cyclingnews.com, Greipel nearly joined the others in abandoning the race in the high-mountain stages leading up to the Giro’s second rest day Tuesday.

“When we did the last hard mountain stage, I nearly stopped three times,” cyclingnews.com quoted Greipel as saying. ”I kept going. … Yesterday, in the rest day, I felt good and we did some sprints. I knew then that I was not tired.”   

So, Greipel was fresh and flying as the peloton zoomed toward the finishing line, with Greipel in his usual spot as the lead-out man for Cavendish, perhaps the best young sprinter in the world. Cavendish had ridden in Greipel’s slipstream en route to two Giro stage wins, but he apparently repaid his lieutenant and let him break free to the line in an unselfish display of teamwork.

High Road, which has re-invented itself as an anti-doping squad under American businessman Bob Stapleton, benefitted Wednesday from having its entire squad in the Giro, which has been a war of attritrition with crashes and withdrawals. Only five teams have their full compliment of riders still in the field.

As a result, High Road was able to work at the front of the peloton to reel in the breakaway and set up Greipel’s win. 

There was no change in the overall classification Wednedsay at the Giro. Astana’s Alberto Contador, the 2007 Tour de France winner,  is in the maglia rosa with a 41 second lead over Saunier Duval-Scott’s Ricardo Ricco.

–30–