Mikel Landa's bid for the 2016 Giro d'Italia took a very important step in the right direction on Sunday when the Basque climber turned in a far better than expected time trial performance on stage 9 in Chianti.
It is almost a year to the day that Landa lost four minutes to overall leader Alberto Contador in the 2015 Giro d'Italia's key time trial, and the Sky rider himself had told Cyclingnews before the Giro started that the 40.5 kilometre time trial would be one of the most difficult moments of the race for him. Astana management had estimated, prior to the stage, that Landa would lose around a minute to Vincenzo Nibali (Astana).
As it turned out, it is Landa's rivals who perhaps should be more worried after the Basque finished 20th on the stage, just 22 seconds slower than Tom Dumoulin (Giant-Alpecin) and only seven seconds slower than Nibali. He even gained three seconds on Steven Kruiswijk (LottoNL-Jumbo) and four on Alejandro Valverde (Movistar) as well as nearly two minutes on Rigoberto Uran (Cannondale) and 1:28 on Esteban Chaves (Orica-GreenEdge).
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Rather than finding himself on the backfoot in the time trial, in fact, Landa was either in a similar position to his closest rivals, or gaining ground on them.
Landa, eighth overall at 1:18, was understandably very satisfied with his performance. That was particularly the case after an uneven first week for Landa where he had, as he told reporters, initially suffered in the early part of the race.
"It went really well, losing so little time to a specialist like Dumoulin is really important, and I'm very optimistic for the days to come. I've come out of this time trial with my overall position a lot stronger."
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Video Highlights
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