Giro: ITT Belongs to Dumoulin, Stage 2 Owned by Kittel

Tom Dumoulin of Giant-Alpecin just scraped in to take the win on the Stage 1 Individual Time Trial of the Giro d’Italia with a winning time of 11 minutes and 3 seconds.

Cancellara reached the finish line and rested on the floor after an all-out time trial where only seconds split the field on Stage 1 of the Giro. Photo by Sirotti

The flat 9.8km course through the Dutch city of Apeldoorn placed Dumoulin only 0.01 seconds in front of Primoz Roglic (LottoNL-Jumbo) for the Maglia pink leaders jersey. Pre-race favorite Fabian Cancellara was off the pace by only 14 seconds but placed him 9th overall.

On Saturday riders embarked on a 190km of relatively flat countryside with some minor climbs and descents, villages and road furnature in Stage 2 of the Giro.

The profile of Stage 2 at the Giro.

The King of the Mountain Classification on the Berg en Dal went to Omar Fraile Matarranz of Dimension Data who was able to out-muscle Maarten Tjallingii (LottoNl-Jumbo) to the top. However, the intermediate sprints were won by Tjallingii in the break away that last almost all day. These riders wore the respective leaders jersey for each classification.

It came down to a sprint in the town of Nijmegen where there was no contest at all for Marcel Kittel and his lead-out team of Etixx-Quickstep. Arnaud Demare and his team at FDJ could only watch as German motored away for the finish.