Filippo Ganna has taken a predicted victory in the UAE Tour stage 2 TT today, the third win of the year for the Ineos Grenadiers outing in just seven starts.
The Italian, and TT world champion, was the red hot favourite to win today's pan flat 13km test at Al Hudayriat Island.
He claimed the victory by 14 seconds from Stefan Bissegger, the 22-year-old Swiss rider with EF Education-Nippo. Another young gun, 22-year-old Dane Mikkel Bjerg (UAE-Team Emirates), was 3rd at 21 seconds.
In 4th place on the stage came Tour de France champion Tadej Pogačar (22) of UAE-Team Emirates, some 24 seconds behind Ganna.
As Pogačar was fastest of the riders who made the front
group on yesterday’s stage 1, which split in the crosswinds, he now takes the
race lead.
The man who won yesterday’s stage, Mathieu van der Poel, exited the race along with his whole Alpecin-Fenix team before today’s stage due to a positive Covid-19 test recorded within the team.
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João Almeida (22) of Deceuninck-QuickStep was also in the front group yesterday, and took intermediate sprint bonus time.
Today he was 6th in the TT, ceding just six seconds to Pogačar and so really putting it up to him for the overall victory with two hilly stages still to come, including tomorrow.
The only other major GC favourite who was in yesterday’s lead group was Adam Yates of Ineos Grenadiers. He lost 58 seconds today to Ganna and was back in 34th place today.
That result for Yates undermines his chances of repeating his overall success of last year, when the race was cut short after an outbreak of Covid-19.
Ireland’s Sam Bennett (Deceuninck-QuickStep) was the only Irish rider in action today, completing the 13km course 1:44 down on Ganna and finishing in 94th place.
Bennett - who was today announced as Irish Independent Sports Star of the Year - has his eye on the sprint stages to come, the next of which is on Wednesday.
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