I may have slightly cocked up a bit mentioning in my team preview blogs that Stage 1 would be a team time trial. Hopefully, that is the first and last mistake I make covering the race…
Stage 1 of the 99th Giro d’Italia starts in the Dutch city of Apeldoorn, with a short 9.8-kilometre technical time trial.
Every stage is a piece of a play in my opinion, and the opening stage plays a vital role in telling the story. It provides a great exposition of all the characters, and gives us a brief understanding of who is in form, and who is not.
While the real racing does not start until the very next day, it will be interesting to see how many of the general classification riders fare. It will be a hectic few days in the Netherlands, where crosswinds and echelons could form.
This time trial is the easiest of the three days in the Netherlands, but losing 20 seconds could be a possibility for general classification riders who are not time trial specialists. Look for Esteban Chaves and Mikel Landa to lose a little bit of time, and for Tom Dumoulin to be inside the top five at the very least.
Dumoulin is one of the favourites on the Stage, but has not won a time trial so far this year. He came narrowly second in both time trials at Romandie recently, though, so is in good form in this discipline.
Two of the teams present come into the race with two riders that could feature at the top end of the results page in this prologue.
Orica-GreenEDGE have dominated the previous two editions’ opening stages, taking consecutive team time trial wins. This time the riders have to do it on their own, but that should not mean that Orica do not get a very good performance from at least one of their riders. While Sam Bewley and Svein Tuft are two solid time trialists, Michael Hepburn and Damien Howson have the goods to produce top five performances.
Hepburn has hardly raced all season, after making a successful return to the track in the lead-up to racing at the Rio Olympics, where he took a gold medal in the team pursuit at the world championships in March.
His legs, therefore, should be well equipped for the shorter distance time trial, but performing on the track is very different to out on the open road.
His form is unknown, having finished outside the top 50 in the short four-kilometre prologue at Romandie, and outside the top 30 on the hilly time trial later in the race.
The same cannot be said for Damien Howson, who has had a stellar season to date, finishing just outside the top 15 at the Tour de Romandie, and standing alongside Peter Kennaugh and Chris Froome on the general classification podium at the Herald Sun Tour. Howson looks to be moving down the path of riding GC in the future, so let’s hope he still has the outright pace to be quick on the opening day.
Trek Segafredo have the main favourite for today’s stage in none other than Fabian Cancellara. Fabian loves an opening day time trial, having won five Tour de France time trial stages on the opening day throughout his career.
With this being his last season of racing, he will want to wear pink at the end of the opening day.
Cancellara has had a solid season, taking away the fact that he fell heavily at Roubaix, he has one time trial win to his name, over similar parcour and distance on the final stage of Tirreno Adriatico, beating current time trial world champion Tony Martin by 15 seconds.
Another Australian can be added to this list of favourites, and his name is Jack Bobridge. Much like Hepburn, he has his pedigree from track cycling and will hopefully use that to the full effect on the opening day of the Giro. The current Australian national time trial champion has hardly raced this year, and did not show great signs at Romandie, but you cannot write off any former track rider on a course such as this.
Watch out for other riders including Patrick Gretsch (AG2R La Mondiale), Stefan Kung (BMC), Ramunas Navardauskas (Cannondale), Bob Jungels (Etixx Quickstep), Matthias Brandle (IAM Cycling), Jos van Emden (Lotto NL – Jumbo), Manuele Boaro (Tinkoff) and Ilnur Zakarin (Katusha).
In my opinion, Cancellara has to be the main favourite. He has a great track record on opening day time trials, and has been in solid form so far this season. Plus, he is an excellent bike handler who will be able to keep his speed consistently high through any of the corners.
Momentum is the aim of the game in a time trial like this. Dumoulin will push Cancellara, but will come up just short.
There could be a bit of a gap between these two and whoever finishes on the bottom step of the podium.
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