The 99th Giro d’Italia got underway in Apeldoorn with Tom Dumoulin (Giant-Alpecin) taking the stage 1 individual time trial win ahead of Primoz Roglic (LottoNL-Jumbo) and Andrey Amador (Movistar). Dumoulin also secured the first pink leaders jersey of the race.
In our debut Giro d’Italia, Team Dimension Data for Qhubeka was motivated to race in front of the huge Apeldoorn crowd despite our African Team not having a specialist against the clock. With the start taking place inside the magnificent Apeldoorn Velodrome, it was a great spectacle to be a part of.
Jaco Venter (pictured above) set a good early time over the 9.8km course for our African Team by coming across the finish-line in a time of 11’49”, which would be an average speed of 50km/h. Roglic looked pretty comfortable in the hot seat, that was until Dumoulin started his effort. After passing the intermediate time check 2 seconds faster than anyone else, Dumoulin went on to set the fastest time, beating the mark set by Roglic by just a few hundredths of a second.
For our African Team, Kanstantsin Siutsou was our last rider to come home and he would also be our best placed finisher on the stage as well. Siutsou set a time of 11’43”, just 40 seconds slower than Dumoulin’s winning effort. All the other riders on our squad had no issues out on the course and we now look forward to tomorrow’s first road stage of the Giro d’Italia.
Merhawi Kudus – Rider
Rolf Aldag – Head of Performance
