A team time trial on a very technical race route with numerous turns and several short climbs allowed to set the times among the 23 teams present in the Giro d'Italia 2013 this afternoon. On the Ischia island, the well formed train of Team Sky turned out the be the fastest and the pink jersey just went over to another rider!

The summary of the second stage of the Tour of Italy 2013 - Ischia > Forio

After a very early transfer by boat this morning towards the Ischia island, the different teams could discover for the first time (only some teams sent over a directeur sportif beforehand to go film the race route but due to the geographical situation of this team time trial, none of the teams had been able to do the race route by bike while preparing this Giro) the race route of this stage which sometimes passed over narrow roads and with some turns which were difficult to negociate when riding as a team.

The teams started in the reverse order of the team classification, except for Omega Pharma-QuickStep, who started last, since Mark Cavendish in the team wore the pink jersey at the start of this stage.

The first team to start was thus the team Colombia and they set a time of 23'01", time which was immediately beaten by AG2R La Mondiale at 22'55" and even more impressively by the Blanco team at 22'33".

Team Sky, which ended the stage with only 5 riders got way under this reference time, with a time of 22'05". Since the time in a team time trial like this one is taken at the crossing of the finish line by the 5th rider of a team, this was enough for the British team to fulfill it's role as one of the favourites in this timed effort.

When the Movistar team improved the intermediate time of Team Sky for 2 secondes in Casamicciola Terme the victory of the British team seemed to become uncertain but in the end the Spanish team lost 11 seconds on Team Sky in the second half of the stage, thus ending at 22'14", 9 seconds slower than Team Sky.

Ending in 22'19", the Astana team made lose 14 seconds on Bradley Wiggins to his biggest opponent for the general classification, Vincenzo Nibali, today. The performance of the Garmin-Sharp team, announced as one of the candidates for victory today, was even worse: at 25 seconds behind Team Sky the Giro d'Italia 2012's winner, Ryder Hesjedal lost some precious time on the winner of the Tour de France 2012.

The Omega Pharma-QuickStep team of the first pink jersey in this Giro d'Italia ended the stage in 22'53", 48 seconds more than Team Sky's time and Cavendish thus lost his precious clothing desined by Paul Smith. For Team Sky Salvatore Puccio will wear the pink jersey at the start of the 3rd stage between Sorrento and Marina di Ascea tomorrow since the Italian rider was the best placed rider for Team Sky in yesterday's stage and since he ended with the 5 first riders to cross the line with the best time today.

Tomorrow's stage could end in a bunch sprint and in that case only the bonus seconds could lead to a change of the pink jersey, but it could also allow a breakaway to go on until the finish. In that case, it's not sure that Team Sky will spend all its energy to keep the pink jersey since we're only at the start of 3 weeks of racing ...

The classification of the second stage of the Tour of Italy 2013

The classification of the second stage of the Giro d'Italia 2013 - Ischia > Fiori

Here's the top 5 of this second stage:

1/ Team Sky - 22'05"
2/ Movistar Team - +0'09"
3/ Astana Pro Team - +0'14"
4/ Katusha - +0'19"
5/ Vini Fantini-Selle Italia - +0'22"

The general classification after the second stage

In the general classification, this timed effort of course led to some big changes since there were no time gaps after yesterday's stage and today's collective gaps thus lead to a grouping of riders from the same teams in the general classification. The 5 first places are taken by riders of Team Sky and the 5 following places by riders of Movistar Team:

1/ Salvatore Puccio (Team Sky) - 3h20'43"
2/ Bradley Wiggins (Team Sky)
3/ Sergio Henao (Team Sky)
4/ Dario Cataldo (Team Sky)
5/ Rigoberto Uran (Team Sky)
6/ Benat Intxausti (Movistar Team) - +0'09"
7/ Giovanni Visconti (Movistar Team)
8/ José Herrada Lopez (Movistar Team)
9/ Alex Dowsett (Movistar Team)
10/ Eros Capecchi (Movistar Team)

The video of the 2nd stage of the Giro d'Italia 2013

Here's today's stage in video:

door Thomas Vergouwen
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this publication is published in: Giro d Italia | Giro d'Italia 2013

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