Stage 1

The road

At the start

The Giro opens against the clock

The Giro starts as a time trial: 19.9 kilometres up the Adriatic coast, dead flat on a seafront cycleway until a short climb into Ortona. Remco Evenepoel and Primož Roglič spent the spring at opposite ends of the same dining room on Mount Teide, and arrive on a level nobody else in this race can reach. Ineos have three cards in Geraint Thomas, Tao Geoghegan Hart and Filippo Ganna — and today is Ganna's kind of road.

How it was won

1. 18 km to go

   Adriatic bike path

   Evenepoel scorches the flat coastal cycleway at better than 55km/h, already fastest through both intermediate checks.

2. 23 km to go

   Foot of the climb

   The gaps are already eye-watering: Roglič is shipping big time, Bahrain's leaders more than 90 seconds down, as Evenepoel reaches the base of the finishing rise.

3. 3At the line

   Ortona

   Evenepoel skips up into Ortona's old town to stop the clock at 21:18, taking the stage and the first pink jersey — 22 seconds on Ganna and a huge 43 on Roglič.

The result