Giro d'Italia Donne: Trek-Segafredo win opening team time trial

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Trek-Segafredo won the opening team time trial of the Giro d'Italia Donne, putting their GC leaders Elisa Longo Borghini and Lucinda Brand into the driving seat of the GC battle. Ruth Winder was the team's first rider across the finish line after 26.7 kilometres and will be the first pink jersey of the 2021 Giro Donne.

Third-last to start, the US-registered team was fastest at the intermediate timing point and kept up the pace on the final uphill kilometres to Cuneo to stop the clock at 33:40.82 minutes, beating the previous best time of 34:20.63 minutes set by Alé BTC Ljubljana. 

The last team to start, Team SD Worx of defending champion Anna van der Breggen, were 17 seconds behind at the intermediate time, and although they could take back some time, it wasn't enough to topple Trek-Segafredo as SD Worx finished eight seconds slower, taking second place and pushing Alé BTC Ljubljana into third.

It was a hard-earned victory for Trek-Segafredo, though, as Lizzie Deignan said: "We won the race, but we did not have the best technical performance. The most important thing in a TTT is to be smooth. In the end, the main thing is that we had a really strong performance, and we won, so I am happy."

How it unfolded

Isolmant-Premac-Vittoria were the first off the start ramp, and the Italian team set a decent time of 36:29 minutes. The first time to improve on this was BePink who finished in 35:51 minutes, a time that stood until Team TIBCO-Silicon Valley Bank came across the line after 35:00.22 minutes – a time that would be good enough for eighth place in the end.

Ceratizit-WNT were the first to finish in under 35 minutes, stopping the clock at 34:59.02 minutes. Led by Swiss ITT champion Marlen Reusser, Alé BTC Ljubljana improved on that by more than half a minute.

Of the next five teams, Jumbo-Visma and Canyon-SRAM stayed below 35 minutes, but neither could endanger the Italian team's lead. Canyon-SRAM came closest with 34:26 minutes, six seconds slower than Alé BTC Ljubljana.

Trek-Segafredo had only the minimum four riders together across the line, but they broke another barrier by finishing in under 34 minutes, setting the best time of the day. Movistar fell short of a winning time, stopping the clock at 34:36 minutes, and when Team SD Worx had crossed the finish line in 33:49 minutes, it was clear that Trek-Segafredo were the winners.

Ruth Winder will line up for stage 2 on Saturday, 99.3 kilometres with a mountaintop finish at Prato Nevoso, in the pink leader's jersey. Although no points were awarded in the points or mountain classifications, the cyclamen points jersey will be worn on stage 2 by Ashleigh Moolman-Pasio (Team SD Worx) while the green mountain jersey is on the shoulders of Mavi García (Alé BTC Ljubljana). Niamh Fisher-Black (Team SD Worx) leads the under-23 classification and will wear the white jersey and Elisa Longo Borghini (Trek-Segafredo) wears the blue jersey as the best Italian rider.