Deignan & Roche safely home after wet Giro stage 2 into Belfast; Kittel romps to win

Marcel Kittel claims the first sprint victory of this year's Giro d'Italia into Belfast after more than five hours in the rain on stage 2 (Photo: Sirotti)

After yesterday’s race-ending crash for Dan Martin (Garmin Sharp) on the opening team time trial stage of the Giro d’Italia, there was slightly better news today when the other two Irish riders in the field came home safely in the bunch.

Both Philip Deignan (Team Sky) and Nicolas Roche (Tinkoff-Saxo) were part of the main body of the peloton that lost three seconds to 20 riders after a gap opened in the charge to the line.

The finishing sprint was won by Marcel Kittel (Giant-Shimano) ahead of Nacer Bouhanni (Fdj.fr) and Giacomo Nizzolo (Trek Factory Racing).

The race came down to a bunch sprint despite a brave quartet of riders deciding to go up the road for most of the stage in wet and windy conditions as the field headed out of Belfast and up the Antrim coast before making their way back to Belfast.

In that group was Belkin’s Maarten Tjallingii, Team Colombia’s Jeffry Johan Romero Corredor, Lotto-Belisol’s Sander Armee and Andrea Fedi (Neri Sottoli-Yellow Fluo). By Ballymena with 45km covered they had 6½ minutes on the peloton.

However, with the Australian team of Orica-GreenEDGE having won last evening’s time trial by five seconds from Omega Pharma-Quickstep, they had their man Svein Tuft in the leader’s pink jersey and five other riders from the team equal on time with him.

It meant once the field arrived at the finish intact, whomever from yesterday's winning team was the highest placed rider across the line would take the pink jersey from Tuft.

And so the Australian squad put in a huge amount of work on the front of the peloton to maintain the gap to the escape once it got established and ensure they would never make it all the way to the Belfast city finish.

Up front at the head of the race it was veteran Tjallingii who took maximum points at the top of both fourth category climbs. However, by the time he took the second of those ascents, and with the race just a few kilometres from the 20km to go marker, the gap between breakaway and bunch was just south of one minute.

The leader's battled on bravely and just after the 10km to go point it was Tjallingii went for a flier, not being reabsorbed until he was inside 4km to the finish.

From that point on it was a battle of the sprinters and their lead out trains, with German Kittel and his Giant-Shimano team winning out quite comfortably in the end.

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Former world U23 champion Michael Matthews was back in 8^th place for Orica-GreenEDGE and on the basis of that placing he assumes the leader's pink jersey.

He has three seconds of daylight between himself and team mate Luck Durbridge in 2^nd place, with Matthews the only one of the Australian team’s riders to make the 20-man group that just split from the rest of the field in today’s finishing sprint.

Tjallingii wears the climbers’ jersey for tomorrow’s stage 3 from Armagh to Dublin and Kittel wears the points jersey.

One of today's breakaway men, Andrea Fedi took the sprints classification lead. Race leader Matthews also has the lead in the young rider classification but as he will be in pink tomorrow, that jersey will be worn by his team mate and former U23 time trial champion Durbridge.

Michael Matthews takes the leader's pink jersey into stage 3 from Armagh to Dublin, with three seconds lead on his team mates and eight seconds on most of the Omega Pharma-Quickstep team (Photo: Sirotti)

May 9th-June 1st: Giro d'Italia

Sat, May 10th: Stage 2 Belfast-Belfast (219km)

General Classification