Photo Credit: Cor Vos

Tirreno Adritatico headed to the hills for stage two, with a 202 kilometre long route that ended with a hill-top finish at Chiusdino. A few probing attacks were made early in the stage before a group of six riders escaped after ten kilometres, quickly building up an advantage north of five minutes.

As the afternoon progressed, the gap to those ahead slowly began to fall as the peloton increased the speed with the climbs approaching in the finale. The team’s did a good job to position the climbers; Romain Bardet, Chris Hamilton and Martijn Tusveld, as the road began to head upwards. The fast pace in the bunch saw the breakaway caught with 30 kilometres still to go and attacks flying from the bunch, with Hamilton riding well to cover one of the moves that was quickly brought to heel.

A group of four strong riders escaped, which resulted in a hard and fast chase for the remainder of the stage. Coming into the uphill finale, Hamilton and Tusveld did well to keep Bardet safe as the pace increased even more. The puncheurs fought it out for the win in a reduced uphill sprint, with Bardet finishing safely within the front group and on the same time on GC.

“Today was the first hard day of the race, and we raced well as a group,” expressed Bardet at the finish. “We still had three guys there in the end, with Chris, Martijn and I which was good, with the rest of the guys doing a nice job before then. We’re still up there on the same time as the main GC group so it was a good day out.”

Team DSM coach Matt Winston added: “The goal for today was to come out of it in a good position for GC, and see if we could get a nice stage result. The stage finish didn’t suit us so much, but we worked really well as a team. We were together into the final where it kicked off at 50 kilometres to go, all together in a good position. The peloton quickly whittled down from that point and we had our three climbing guys there. They brought Romain into the final well and we didn’t lose any time on GC there. We didn’t get a top result today but we still have that secondary goal which is still in play so we’re happy.”