Markus started relatively early and covered the 14-kilometre course in a time of 18:41. A few minutes later, Van Dijk was seven seconds faster, but other riders couldn’t come close to the time of the Team Jumbo-Visma rider. Jip van den Bos finished at 19:39, which earned her tenth place. Romy Kasper was less fortunate. The 33-year-old German was riding a solid time trial until she hit the fence in the last corner and crashed. It was a big disappointment, but otherwise, she was fine and Kasper still managed to finish. As a result, she received the organisation’s fighting spirit prize.

“I am super happy with second place”, Markus said. “I just got back from altitude training and we trained specifically for the time trial, so it’s nice that everything went well today. There were still some areas for improvement, so it makes you wonder if I could have won otherwise. It was close, but I’m thrilled with this result.”

Markus is looking forward to the coming days. “The goal is to go for the general classification. There are two nice and tough stages coming up, so we will see if we can move up a place.”

Sports director Lieselot Decroix was proud of her riders. “Riejanne’s second place is very good. We aimed at making a step forward this winter; the team has invested a lot in her time trial. We are happy that she is so close to victory now. With Jip in tenth and Karlijn Swinkels in fifteenth place, we are in an excellent position for the upcoming stages. We will try to win the final classification.”