Tom Dumoulin (Team Sunweb) took a convincing victory on stage 10 of the Giro d’Italia and the Dutch rider now takes over the maglia rosa from Nairo Quintana (Movistar).

After an impressive performance on the gruelling ascent of the Blockhaus on Sunday, Dumoulin started the individual time trial today as one of the pre-race favourites and he got off to a powerful start reaching the first intermediate checkpoint 18 seconds quicker than the previous fastest time.

Upon arrival at the second intermediate time-check, Dumoulin clocked in 36 seconds faster than his closest rival – Geraint Thomas (Team Sky) at 33 minutes and 24 seconds, showing that his time spent in the wind tunnel at TU Delft University made a massive difference today.

Dumoulin’s powerful time trial was a force to be reckoned with and after a furious sprint to the line, he finished the stage with a time of 50 minutes and 37 seconds, an impressive 49 seconds faster than Thomas. The stage victory means that Dumoulin moves into the lead in the general classification with a lead of 2 minutes and 23 seconds.

After his victory Dumoulin said: “Before I started the stage I actually didn’t have a good feeling but now I see the result I realise that wasn’t the case. Today I didn’t give up, I fought with myself until the end and gave it all that I had. Its nice to go into the mountains with a good advantage but like the Vuelta showed me, you can loose everything in one day. We have some really tough stages coming up and it’s still a long way to go.”

Photo: © Cor Vos | Team Sunweb

Team Sunweb coach Aike Visbeek said: “Tom did a splendid time trial, he had a tremendous amount of pressure and there were a lot of expectations. The whole day went really smoothly and we are all incredibly proud. This is a great moment for the team, and to have the jersey for two years in a row makes it extra special. We are looking forward to doing the jersey proud tomorrow.”

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