Filippo Ganna (Ineos Grenadiers) lived up expectations and the pre-race pronostics, winning the opening time trial of the Giro d’Italia in Turin, taking the first race leader’s maglia rosa.
The world time trial champion had felt the pressure after struggling in the Tirreno-Adriatico and more recent Tour de Romandie time trials but just like last year in Palermo, ‘Top Ganna’ was a level above his rivals.
He covered the 8.6km course in a time of 8:47 – an average speed of 58.748kph. He beat compatriot Edoardo Affini (Jumbo-Visma) by 10 seconds, with Tobias Foss, also for Jumbo-Visma, rounding out the podium a further three seconds back with a time of 9:00.
"After Romandie my morale was not too high, but now its back and I’m really happy," Ganna said. "It’s been a lot of time that I wasn’t in the hot seat but I’m here and so I’m really happy."
The time trial was a fast affair with the overall contenders riding to limit their time losses.
The best performance came from last year’s revelation João Almeida (Deceuninck-QuickStep), who finished fourth on the stage with a time of 9:04. Teammate and comeback kid Remco Evenepoel, who was also making his Grand Tour debut was seventh and only two second slower, while Astana-Premier Tech leader Aleksandr Vlasov finished 11 seconds down on Almeida. They gained a chunk of psychologically important time on their GC rivals.
Egan Bernal and Pavel Sivakov (Ineos Grenadiers), Hugh Carthy (EF Education-Nippo), Simon Yates (BikeExchange) and Vincenzo Nibali all put in very similar solid performances, losing 20 or so seconds to Almeida. Dan Martin (Israel Start-Up Nation) was the biggest loser, shipping 40 seconds to Almeida.
Watch the stage 1 video highlights from the Giro d'Italia above.
