Nairo Quintana, Thibaut Pinot and Tejay van Garderen can count themselves among the big winners from Wednesday's opening team time trial at Tirreno-Adriatico, which set the early pecking order ahead of six more days of racing in Italy.
Other squads weren't so fortunate, with Sky's rough day standing out as the most disastrous. Geraint Thomas, Michal Kwiatkowski and Mikel Landa all seemed to be plausible general classification hopefuls, but catastrophic wheel problems saw the team finish over a minute and a half behind stage-winning BMC.
Although pancake-flat and not overly long at 22.7 kilometres, the TTT has already put the GC battle at Tirreno-Adriatico into focus.
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Damiano Caruso officially leads the race, but his teammate van Garderen is likely the BMC rider to watch as the road tilts upward in the stages to come. Van Garderen's 17-second advantage to the nearest rival isn't massive, but it's respectable in a one-week race. BMC were pre-race favourites for the TTT, however, so it's little surprise that van Garderen came away from the opener in a strong position. The question is now whether he can hold on to that advantage in the coming days.
"It is always better to start ahead than behind so it's great to get a leg up on the other GC contenders heading into the big stages," he said. "The season is still young, and I don't have a lot of racing in my legs, but I feel good on the bike and my the morale is good. We have had a good start here so if we keep this momentum going, I should be in a really good place."
Matching the climbing talents present at Tirreno will be a tall order, but van Garderen's teammate Rohan Dennis can't be ignored either given the strong start he enjoyed in the opener as well.
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