Road race machines from the 93rd Giro d'Italia

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This year's flat opening road stages of the Giro d'Italia have naturally favored the sprinters of the peloton, with Tyler Farrar (Garmin-Transitions) taking stage 2 and Wouter Weylandt (Quick Step) conquering stage 3. Not surprisingly, most of the major contenders' bikes have been geared more towards outright speed rather than light weight – at least for now.

Deep-section wheels have been the norm overall as aerodynamics has been a more important performance metric than mass thus far. Still, the occasionally blustery conditions – especially along the coast – have caused riders to temper those tendencies a bit, though, as we saw nothing deeper than 80mm (not a single Zipp 1080 in sight) and some smaller or lighter riders going with shallow-section wheels altogether.

Even stage 3 winner Weylandt went fairly conservative with FFWD's 50mm-deep F5, in the extra-stiff 'C' variant with a higher spoke count to better handle his 79kg (174lb) weight.

As has become customary these days, Cervélo TestTeam riders have also gone with aerodynamic frames, too, with nearly everyone on the sleek S3 with the notable exception of 2008 Tour de France winner Carlos Sastre who still prefers the softer ride of the R3-SL model – not that it matters much for him as he's generally well protected from the wind anyway.

Several Garmin-Transitions riders also played the aero frame card with Felt's speedy AR, which is largely based on the company's dedicated DA time trial platform. Most of those were spotted with either 40mm-deep Mavic Cosmic Carbone Ultimates or 52mm-deep Cosmic Carbone SLR tubulars (the latter still only available to the public in clincher form). Svein Tuft went all-in, though, with a set of Mavic's new 80mm-deep Cosmic 80 carbon tubulars.