Key Takeaways: Giro d'Italia Stage 1

Breaking down a thrilling opening stage that served up an upset win and gave an early shape to the overall standings

At the tail end of a fast and furious opening stage on the outskirts of Torino, which almost appeared to sparkle under quintessentially Italian sunshine, Ineos’ Jhonatan Narváez spoiled Tadej Pogačar’s party by outsprinting the heavy pre-race favorite to take the stage win and the early overall lead, while Bora’s Max Schachmann wedged himself into between Narváez and Pogačar to finish second on the day and signal he could emerge a darkhorse GC contender over the course of the next three weeks. While Pogačar’s UAE team potentially miscalculated by setting a brutally hard pace near the end of the stage that left the superstar in a vulnerable situation, they were successful in dislodging multiple big-name GC rivals, which has significantly thinned down the list of potential overall contenders just a few hours into the three-week race. Check out the key moments and takeaways from the stage below:

Stage 1 Top Five:
1) Jhonatan Narváez (Ineos) +0
2) Max Schachmann (Bora-Hansgrohe) +0
3) Tadej Pogačar (UAE) +0
4) Alex Baudin (Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale) +6
5) Nicola Conci (Alpecin-Deceuninck) +10

Select GC Standings After Stage 1:
2) Max Schachmann (Bora-Hansgrohe) +0
3) Tadej Pogačar (UAE) +3
5) Damiano Caruso (Bahrain) +14
8) Mauri Vansevenant (Soudal-QuickStep) +17
9) Antonio Tiberi (Bahrain) +17
11) Geraint Thomas (Ineos) +17
13) Dani Martínez (Bora) +17
14) Cian Uijtdebroeks (Visma-LAB) +17
15) Eddie Dunbar (Jayco-Alula) +17
19) Ben O’Connor (Decathlon-AG2R) +17

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Stage 1 Race Notebook

BTP is seamlessly following every twist and turn of the 2024 Giro d’Italia with the fantastic Tour Tracker app (iPhone/Android/Web)

33.6km-to-go: As the largely intact peloton enters the first of two passes of the final circuit in Torino and hits the short but steep, Bivio di San Vito climb, Tadej Pogačar’s UAE team hits the front and begins to increase the pace.

26.8km: On the Colle della Maddalena climb, which is the hardest on the day and one Pogačar wishes to be decisive, his UAE team significantly increases the pace to thin down the still-massive peloton.

25.3km: In their effort to thin down the peloton, UAE’s Mikkel Bjerg begins riding at a sustained 460 watts and nearly touching 50km/hr on the front.

24km: This pace is successful in blowing up the peloton and dropping podium contenders like Thymen Arensman and Romain Bardet, but it also proves too hot for Pogačar’s UAE team, which leaves him exposed near the top of the climb, with just a single teammate, Rafał Majka, remaining.

16.3km: This means that in the kilometers after the climb, Pogačar is somewhat dangerously placed in a lead group with multiple GC rivals, including three Bora riders, and only a single teammate (Majka), to control a flurry of attacks.

10km: Eventually, attacks from Max Schachmann and Mikkel Frølich Honoré pull out a group with serious GC contenders, like Damiano Caruso, nearly half a minute up the road, and Pogačar is forced to sit back, watch the gap grow, and hope Majka can control the move.

3.5km: Pogačar’s patience is rewarded when his group reels in the escaped GC leaders on the final climb, and he wastes no time going on the attack.

3km: While the move is incredibly strong, Jhonatan Narváez is able to leverage his great Classics form to hang on, with Schachmann hovering a second or two behind. The three riders would go over the summit and down to the finish line together.

600m: Coming into the final straightaway, Pogačar, who is stuck on the front due to Narváez and Schachmann knowing he needs to prioritize time gains on the GC rivals left behind, sits up in an attempt to prepare for the sprint, but, stuck in an almost impossible situation, the others are willing to call his bluff.

Finish: Pogačar, after launching his sprint from quite a long way out, is overtaken in the final few meters by a flying Narváez and surging Schachmann. While he finishes third on the stage, his consolation prize is taking chunks of time from his biggest GC rivals.

Key Takeaways

1) Tadej Pogačar & UAE: The pre-race favorite may have missed out on the stage win and been left vulnerable at a key point in the race due to a miscalculation by his UAE team, but in the process, he took time on every major pre-race GC contender and forced the responsibilities of the leader’s jersey onto the Ineos team his biggest rival, Geraint Thomas.

• There has been quite a bit of chatter since the stage about a perceived weakness in Pogačar due to his ability to ride clear and win solo, but in response to this, it is important to point out that Pogačar’s power (575 watts/8.7 w/kg est) and VAM (2,372) numbers on the final climb were historically good, and that he will win this Giro d’Italia 20+ minute, not sub five, minute climbs at the end of a three-hour stage.

• Just like Milano-Sanremo earlier this season, we are reminded that even for a rider as good as Pogačar, it is incredibly difficult for lightweight riders to ride clear on short climbs after (relatively) easy days of racing.

  • In short, nothing we saw today from Pogačar makes me any less confident that he will cruise to the overall victory at this Giro if he stays off the ground.

    • After all, if we pull out to a high-level view, Pogačar was successful in eliminating multiple serious GC threats and distancing the rest by a margin equal to the total margin of victory at the end of the 2023 edition of the Giro, after a short, relatively easy three-hour stage without any Cat 1 or higher climbs.

      • And, while Pogačar clearly wanted to win the stage and attempt to hold the leader’s jersey all the way to Rome in three weeks, today’s outcome, which saw a rival GC team, Ineos, forced to take responsibility for it, is a far better outcome for Pogačar’s UAE team.

• While Pogačar looked strong on Stage 1, one component of his Giro title hopes that looked slightly shaky was his UAE team, which, after setting a brutally hard pace on the penultimate climb, left Pogačar isolated and exposed to attacks over the top.

  • Concerningly, having their team collapse around Pogačar after going from setting a fairly soft pace to an all-out assault also happened earlier this year at Milano-Sanremo, exposes their lack of a well-drilled support squad around the pre-race favorite.

    • While Pogačar and Majka were strong enough to parry the late GC move today, things could spiral out of hand later in this race if they continue to make the same mistake and their rivals sense an opportunity.

      • And, even if Pogačar’s level is high enough to cruise through the remainder of this Giro without issue, UAE’s Tour de France rivals, like Primoz Roglič, Remco Evenepoel and perhaps even Jonas Vingegaard, certainly took note of the team’s issues today.

2) The Duality of Ineos’ Day: The British team experienced a wide range of emotions over the course of thirty minutes. First, they saw one of their GC contenders, Thymen Arensman, lose contact with the peloton before Geraint Thomas proved that he had once again pulled form out of thin air after hanging in the front group for an impressively long time, and Jhonatan Narváez matched Pogačar’s pace and won the sprint to take the stage win and overall race lead.

• While Arensman may be upset that an inability to match UAE’s pace cost him over two minutes in the GC, it potentially benefits the team as a whole since it means that the young Dutch rider can now be used as a wildcard in service of Thomas, who, through the early climbs, looks as strong as he was when he finished second in 2023, despite showing almost no signs of GC-worthy form for the past twelve months.

  • With Arensman so far down the GC leaderboard after the first stage, Ineos should now be able to send him into the early breakaway on mountain stages (potentially even on tomorrow’s second stage), which will put pressure on Pogačar and his UAE team, and potentially boost Thomas’ GC hopes.

• For Narváez, the hugely impressive stage win is a high water mark in his career and caps what has been a great, if understated, 2024 season, which saw him finish second place overall at the Tour Down Under, show promise in the Spring Classics, and be Ineos’ best-performing rider for long stretches.

  • In the future, the 27-year-old Ecuadorian should be considered a threat on these difficult Grand Tour stages, as well as punchy one-day races.

    • With the Olympics taking place on a tough circuit in Paris later this year, Narváez has announced that he won’t be outclassed by the sport’s top riders when he takes the start line.

3) The GC Field Is Already Losing Significant Ground to Pogačar: Despite the presence of a thrilling stage where it felt like anything could happen for a few fleeting moments after the dust settled, nearly all of the non-Pogačar pre-race GC contenders appeared off the pace on a mild stage one and are likely to lose even more time on tomorrow’s summit finish. This makes it difficult to imagine where a viable GC threat will come from, but we shouldn’t sleep Max Schachmann, a former rising star, hiding in plain sight.

• Before the start of the stage, Romain Bardet, Florian Lipowitz, and Thymen Arensman were considered serious GC contenders, but afterward, they were all facing the loss of serious chunks of time to Pogačar.

  • Bardet: lost 1’01

  • Arensman: lost 2’21

  • Lipowitz: lost 2’29

• Even Pogačar’s best-performing GC rivals, like Caruso, Thomas and Martínez, had to be happy with only losing 11 to 14-seconds on a short opening stage.

  • For all the talk of Pogačar looking vulnerable after the stage, this doesn’t bode particularly well for them on the harder stages to come to that suit Pogačar’s talent even more.

• However, one rider with a GC pedigree (two overall wins at Paris-Nice), Bora’s Max Schachmann, was capable of matching Pogačar in the finale, and shouldn’t be written off as a mere stage hunter at this race, especially after appearing to be back to his best after two seasons in the wilderness.

4) Modern Course Design Has Changed Opening Weekends for the Better: While it would have been considered gauche for a Grand Tour to hold two GC-significant days in its opening weekend just a few years ago, today’s stage, which featured perfect weather, stunning scenery, and, most importantly, thrilling racing, should stand as a testament to how slight tweaks in modern race design have changed the sport for the better.

• After all, outside of today’s stage, which was one of the best opening salvos in recent memory, this is the second time in the last twelve months that we’ve been treated to a thrilling day of racing on the opening stage of a Grand Tour (2023 Tour de France & 2024 Giro d’Italia).

Stage 2 Preview

After Saturday’s well-orchestrated parcours that balanced a stage and GC battle, Sunday’s Stage 2 wastes no time jumping right into the middle of the GC battle, with the famed Oropa climb (12kms at 6.2%) serving up a platform to Tadej Pogačar to land an even more serious blow on his GC rivals, while chasing Marco Pantani’s record ascent time of 17’04.

• The somewhat flat opening 100 kilometers, which will take the peloton from the outskirts of Torino to the Alps, could be difficult for Pogačar’s UAE team to manage, but with Ineos holding the Pink Jersey, they will likely have held the gap to the breakaway before they hit the first few climbs.

• Also, the straight-forward summit finish lowers the risk of burning their matches too early since, even if Pogačar finds himself isolated on Oropa, all he has to do is attack and force the others to attempt to follow.

• Prediction: Even if they missed the mark today, I expect UAE to deliver Pogačar to victory, and the race lead, at the end of the stage. After all, at just the second stage, they will almost certainly still have the strength to reel in the breakaway to allow Pogačar to contest the stage.