This year's edition of the Giro d'Italia has been kicked off with a hilly and tricky stage, which brought the riders from Venaria Reale to Torino. The riders for the general classification already had to be present on the first day of the race. In this blog post, I will give you my takeaways of this stage together with a little explanation.
1. Good and bad news for the Ineos Grenadiers
The Ineos Grenadiers will have mixed feelings on this day. On the one side, they can be very happy, as they won the first stage with Jhonatan Narvaez, beating Pogacar and Schachmann in the sprint. However, Thymen Arensman, one of their riders for the general classification, lost contact with the peloton relatively early. In the end, the Dutchman lost more than two minutes towards his teammate.
2. A little mistake from UAE Team Emirates
On the slopes of the "Colle della Maddalena", the riders of UAE Team Emirates were setting a really high pace to make the race as hard as possible. Consequently, a lot of riders lost contact with the peloton, including some riders from UAE Team Emirates. In the final, they could've use one more rider to control all the attacks of riders to get away.
3. Tadej Pogacar (UAE Team Emirates) already took time towards his rivals
Despite holding the pace to high on the penultimate climb, Tadej Pogacar clearly showed why he is one of the best riders at this moment. The Slovenian launched several attacks to close the gap to the riders in the front and accelerated to get rid of everyone else. In the end, he finished third and already took fourteen seconds towards his rivals for the general classification.
4. Romain Bardet (Team DSM-Firmenich PostNL) will already have to chase
Romain Bardet didn't have a good first day of this race. The Frenchman lost contact with the peloton on the "Colle della Maddalena". In the end, he lost about a minute towards Pogacar. As a result, he will already have to attack to gain some time towards Pogacar and other general classification riders.