Maglia rosa Rohan Dennis (BMC) and Points leader Elia Viviani (Quick-Step Floors) ahead of stage 3 at the Giro d'Italia(Image credit: Tim de Waele/TDWSport.com)
Tom Dumoulin celebrates after winning the opening time trial at the 2018 Giro d'Italia(Image credit: Bettini Photo)
Elia Viviani (Quick-Step Floors) wins stage 3 of Giro d'Italia 2018(Image credit: Tim de Waele/TDWSport.com)
Guillaume Boivin (Israel Cycling Academy) leads the stage 3 breakaway at the Gir d'Italia(Image credit: Bettini Photo)
As the 2018 edition of the Giro d'Italia pauses to recover from a hectic Grande Partenza in Israel, take a walk down the lanes of recent memory as Cyclingnews looks back at the three opening stages.
Before the race even got underway, Kanstantsin Siutsou (Bahrain-Merida) was out due to a crash in the time trial course preview. Chris Froome (Team Sky), Miguel Angel Lopez (Astana) and Jack Haig (Mitchelton-Scott) also crashed on the first day.
Tom Dumoulin (Sunweb), however, picked up where he left off in last year's race, pulling on the leader's maglia rosa after claiming a hard-fought win in the stage 1 individual time trial. But having won by two thin seconds over BMC's Rohan Dennis, his lead was vulnerable to attack.
BMC made their intentions clear on the first road stage, pulling back the breakaway to set up Dennis for the time bonus at the intermediate sprint. The plan was perfectly executed, and Dennis scored the three-second bonus in Caesarea to take the race lead.
From there on out, it was the Elia Viviani show, with Quick-Step Floors delivering the Italian to back-to-back stage victories.
