Jonathan Milan (Bahrain-Victorious) was a delighted and very popular winner of today's stage 2 on Giro d'Italia, with his team mates, and even riders from rival squads, descending on him at the finish in San Salvo to congratulate the 22-year-old.
However, other riders were less pleased with how the finale had played out. A crash - caused by the jockeying for position with about 4km to go - took out a group of riders and also created a gap in the bunch, which grew all the way to the line.
Irish riders Ben Healy (EF Education-EasyPost) and Eddie Dunbar (Team Jayco AlUla) were among those riders who lost 19 seconds due to the damage caused by the crash. Neither rider will be overly concerned about what is a relatively minor time loss in a three-week race.
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The good news for both was that they avoided the crash, caused by a swerve in the middle of the bunch. It saw a handful of riders crash towards spectators on the right side of the road as the bunch was traveling at very high speed.
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Milan, who is riding his first Grand Tour, came through the chaos to claim victory with a very powerful finishing effort. The Italian, who won gold at the Olympics in the team pursuit in Tokyo 2020, used all that power today to win from David Dekker (Team Arkéa Samsic) and Kaden Groves (Alpecin-Deceuninck).
The result had no real impact on the general classification as all the big names missed it and most of them also avoided losing time. However, Tao Geoghegan Hart (Ineos Grenadiers), Jay Vine (UAE Team Emirates) and Jack Haig (Bahrain Victorious) were in the large group that lost 19 seconds.
Going into tomorrow's stage 3 - some 213k from Vasto to Melfi with a late cat 4 climb - Remco Evenepoel (Soudal-QuickStep) leads by 22 seconds from Filippo Ganna (Ineos Grenadiers) with João Almeida (UAE Team Emirates) 3rd at 29 seconds.
As a result of his time loss, Dunbar drops two places to 26th, at 1:44. However, Healy is up three places and now sits 46th at 2:04. Tomorrow's stage looks like one for the sprinters so we are unlikely to see Dunbar or Healy poking their nose into the wind on the 202km road to Melfi.
