This year’s Tirreno had an atypical start compared to recent years. In the first stage the riders faced a flat individual time trial of just under fourteen kilometres.

“It was very tough”, Vingegaard said. “I didn’t feel very good and didn’t ride my best time trial. It’s not the best start, but we’ll see how it goes the rest of the week.”

According to sports director Maarten Wynants, anything is still possible. “We suffered a little blow today in the fight for a good final classification. We had hoped for something more, but it wasn’t super bad either. A lot can still happen. We had high hopes of competing for the win with Edoardo, but he immediately felt that it wasn’t possible today. The same goes for Jonas. For him, the goal was to finish as close as possible to the other classification riders. We had hoped for more and so did they. Jos rode a fantastic time trial. Eighth is very good when you look at the field of participants.”