Cyclist Basso urges calm after slap

Former Tour of Italy winner Ivan Basso has called for calm after he was slapped and insulted by separatists during the Tour of the Po Valley. He and fellow Italian rider Sacha Modolo put their names to a statement from organisers on Wednesday, the second day of the tour, in which they called for respect for the cyclists. "We're cyclists and we've come here to this race to ride and we ask the public to allow us to do so," said the statement. "We were insulted and someone even went as far as to start slapping us. "We find this behaviour unacceptable. We're sportsmen, we train hard every day so we can race and we don't accept that our efforts are for nothing." The Po Valley, in the north of Italy, is home to a secessionist movement supported by the right-wing Northern League political party which wants to create a separate northern Italian state.