2018 Giro d'Italia Stage 1 Results & Recap
Stage 1 of the 2018 Giro d'Italia is in the books. The final results and standings are below, followed by our recap of how the race unfolded.
Race Recap
Dumoulin calmly soars to Giro d’Italia stage one victory
Defending Giro d’Italia champion Tom Dumoulin (Team Sunweb) put all questions of his form aside when he easily won the opening time trial of the 101st edition. The Dutch world time trial champion out rode Australian Rohan Dennis by two seconds on the 9.7-kilometer technical course to slip in to the pink jersey.
It was a nail-biting day for Dennis, who rode into the hot seat early on in the day with a time of 12 minutes and four seconds. His time withstood the times of multiple time trial specialists, but it all came down to the last rider, Dumoulin, to topple the BMC riders time.
Dumoulin navigated the 18-corner course with ease and smoothness, unlike his closest rival Chris Froome, who crashed while scouting out the route earlier in the day. Could that have affected the Tour de France champion, on the hunt for the triple crown of grand tours this year? Perhaps. The Sky captain finished his ride a concerning 37 seconds down on Dumoulin, which will play a factor when the Giro takes to the mountains.
Defending champion Dumoulin now takes the overall lead into stage two, with a decent lead on many of his overall rivals already.
Victor Campenaerts (Lotto Soudal), European time trial champion was the only rider to really challenge Dennis (before Dumoulin took off, of course). The Belgian rider finished with the same time as Dennis, but slipped into third place by just a hair.
Tomorrow's stage will see the riders depart from Haifa to Tel Aviv on a 164 kilometer jaunt to an expected sprint finish. There's only one lesser categorised climb on tap, at 91 kilometers into the stage.
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