Tom Dumoulin's pink jersey, being paraded by a home rider in front of an adoring Dutch public at the Giro d'Italia, is already imbued with plenty of meaning, but it takes on even greater significance when viewed in the light of Giant-Alpecin's tumultuous 2016 season.
It was just over three months ago that a car ploughed head-on into seven members of the team out on a training ride in Spain, leaving the riders involved injured and traumatised, and the squad as a whole severely depleted.
The team has struggled to scramble enough riders together to enter the races on its calendar, let alone seriously entertain serious ambitions of winning them. So when Dumoulin powered round Friday's race-opening time trial course to earn the team's first victory of the season, it was a "tipping point", in the words of manager Iwan Spekenbrink.
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"We had an accident that was bigger than cycling," he tells Cyclingnews outside the team bus in Arnhem on the morning of stage 2. "At that moment there were lives at stake.
"We had to accept the setback. Some people needed support recover and also to mentally leave it behind. We needed time and we said, 'if everyone keeps working the team will get back to full strength we will show we are better again. Just give us a bit of time'."
Unfortunately, patience is not always a word that can be applied to professional cycling, a sport where the all-important sponsors are invariably hungry to see a return on their investment. Shortly after the crash, Spekenbrink marked out the Tour de France as the point at which we might see his team back at full strength and firing on all cylinders, but it seems to have come one Grand Tour and two months early.
You can read more at Cyclingnews.com
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