It was an incredible start to the Giro d’Italia today for the BORA-hansgrohe team, as they finished the day leading all of the classifications. Cesare Benedetti was in the break of the day and took the Maglia Azzura for the best climber. Lukas Pöstlberger broke clear in the closing kilometres to take the stage victory and also the Maglia Rosa, the Maglia Bianca and the Maglia Ciclamino. In addition, the team leads also the team classification.
The 100th edition of the Giro started in Alghero Sardinia, and the race took the peloton through the beautiful coastline on the north of the island. The first stage covered more than 200 kilometres with 3 KOM´s and 2 intermediate sprints, on a stage that favoured the sprinters.
Directly after the start, a group of 6 riders formed the breakaway of the day. Cesare Benedetti represented BORA – hansgrohe in the day´s break group, which already had an advantage of 7 minutes after 40 kilometres of racing. Behind in the peloton, the sprinter teams, namely Quick-Step Floors, Lotto-Soudal and Orica-Scott controlled the pace as expected.
Benedetti took the first two KOM’s of the day after a hard fight between the breakaway companions, which put him in a comfortable position in the fight for the blue jersey. Because the group was caught before the last climb of the day, with 3km to go, Benedetti became the first leader in the KOM in this year’s Giro d’Italia.
The final 5 kilometres took the peloton from big to smaller roads, with lots of changes in direction, technical corners and tailwind, a very fast finish was expected.
The thrilling finale saw Lukas Pöstlberger gaining a gap over the peloton and realising he had gotten the jump, he gave it everything to stay clear and take his first Grand Tour victory in his young career with Caleb Ewan (Orica-Scott) and Andre Greipel (Lotto-Soudal) taking second and third.
Pöstlberger also took the Maglia Rosa, the jersey for the best sprinter and also the jersey for the best youngest rider.
Lukas Pöstlberger – “When we entered Olbia we lost each other a little and the race started to become disorganised. Some guys attacked and I jumped to close for Sam. But behind me there was a gap then and I heard in the radio “you have a gap, go”. Somehow everything felt pretty easy then, like a flow. At 700m I was wondering why nobody overtook me. In the end, nobody came till the end and I won. I have no words for all this. It will take some hours or a glass of wine to realise what happened today.”
