Giro d'Italia 2022: Time Trial top three finish a confidence boost for Simon Yates & Tom Dumoulin

After a thrilling day against the clock for the participants of the 105th Giro d’Italia, the stand-out performance is undoubtedly that of the eventual victor, Team BikeExchange Jayco’s British GC hopeful Simon Yates. The astonishing speed shown by Simon Yates on the stage 2 time trial is a gauntlet thrown in the direction of his GC rivals.

It lays down a marker and proves that the Lancastrian climber has more to offer than pure climbing skills. On a day in which attention was focused more on the wearer of the maglia rosa, Mathieu van der Poel, the business of scoring as many seconds of time advantage as possible was foremost on Yates’ agenda.

In the 9.2km challenge in Budapest, Yates recorded the fastest time of 11.50 to take the fifth Giro stage victory of his career, and move himself up to second in the general classification, 11 seconds behind van der Poel, who finished second. With the Dutch rider unlikely to present a significant challenge to Yates and the rest of the GC contenders in the long-run, Yates could rightly consider himself maglia rosa-in waiting, as the race heads for a final flat stage in Hungary before departing for Italian soil.

Ad/> GC riders have always had to prove themselves over a variety of terrains, and although this year’s Giro features the fewest time trial kilometres of any grand tour for the past 20 years, Yates’ strong form against the clock will still cause consternation to his rivals. With a final stage time trial looming on the horizion, Yates could feasibly claw back any losses incurred in the intervening mountain stages.