Team Sunweb’s Tom Dumoulin secured victory on stage one of the Giro d’Italia today, finishing his race against the clock in a time of 12 minutes and two seconds. His efforts also mean that he wears the first Maglia Rosa of the 2018 edition of the race.
The Dutchman finished two seconds ahead of Rohan Dennis (BMC Racing Team) with Victor Campenaerts (Lotto Fix All) in third on the same time as Dennis. Amongst the GC favourites, Thibaut Pinot (Groupama-FDJ) finished 33″ behind with Chris Froome (Team Sky) 37″ down.
Dumoulin said: “I knew that I felt good but you have to see how things go during the race. We’ve worked really hard over the last few months, so I’m really happy with the win because it confirms that all of the work has paid off.
“The course was really good for me; it was really technical and I’m good on the corners. I could go full gas, then recover, then go full gas and recover again. It’s nice to be in the Maglia Rosa but it will be hard to keep it for three weeks. We aren’t planning on defending it every day so we will see what we do with that in the coming days.”
Team Sunweb coach Marc Reef added: “We had a really good preparation period and the atmosphere in the team is really good, relaxed and focused which helped us to get the win today. The course here in Jerusalem was quite difficult; they were hard parcours which were constantly up and down with really warm temperatures. Technically Tom did a really good TT and in the end, whilst some guys had problems keeping the pace high, he could continue strong. We are all very happy and proud of this victory.”
