Team Sunweb (Italy) – Team Sunweb’s Tom Dumoulin has secured the stage one victory at the Giro d’Italia, winning the race against the clock in a time of 12 minutes and two seconds.

The last rider off the ramp, the individual world time trial champion set the fastest time at the intermediate time check with six minutes and 17 seconds, finally stopping the clock after his 9.7 kilometre effort with a time of 12 minutes and two seconds. His victory means he takes the first Maglia Rosa of the 2018 Giro d’Italia.

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Tom said: “It’s been quite a cool few days in Israel and today tops it off with the win. I knew that I felt good but you have to see how things go during the race. We’ve worked really hard over the last few months, so I’m really happy with the win because it confirms that all of the work has paid off. The course was really good for me; it was really technical and I’m good on the corners. I could go full gas, then recover, then go full gas and recover again. It’s nice to be in the Maglia Rosa but it will be hard to keep it for three weeks. We aren’t planning on defending it every day so we will see what we do with that in the coming days.”

Team Sunweb coach Marc Reef added: “We had a really good preparation period and the atmosphere in the team is really good, relaxed and focused which helped us to get the win today. The course here in Jerusalem was quite difficult; they were hard parcours which were constantly up and down with really warm temperatures. Technically Tom did a really good TT and in the end, whilst some guys had problems keeping the pace high, he could continue strong. We are all very happy and proud of this victory.”