Opinion: Mathieu van der Poel and Biniam Girmay extend stellar spring form into Giro d'Italia

Mathieu van der Poel and Biniam Girmay are so strong their rivals are literally falling over trying to follow them. On an opening day of the Giro where much of the pre-stage debate surrounded the likelihood of the sprinters’ ability to get up the final climb, the race’s first maglia rosa was still contested by three of the peloton’s fastest finishers.

Ad/> Mark Cavendish had checked himself out of contention long before the road to the castle at Visegrad tilted up to its maximum eight percent; Arnaud Demare, for all his Poggio prowess, did not go the distance, while Fernando Gaviria was one of the last to let the elastic snap. Giro d'Italia'That's bizarre!' — Shock as Van der Poel fires Prosecco cork into his face on podium3 HOURS AGO But after the thrills and spills that saw both Lawrence Naesen and Lennard Kamna try gutsy long-range attacks, and Cavendish’s Quick-Step Alpha Vinyl team-mate Davide Ballerini crash out of the reckoning, came the moment that, in retrospect, seemed utterly inescapable.

Spoiler: it didn’t include Mathieu van der Poel. Or if it did, none of us could see him – perhaps on account of that olive green camouflage jersey, which worked a treat as Alpecin-Fenix’s main man ghosted past his fading colleagues, biding his time and keeping his powder dry until the last possible moment.

Van der Poel grabs thrilling Stage 1 victory at Giro as Ewan crashes in final dash Giro d’Italia – Stage 1 as it happened: Van der Poel times it right No, the slap in the face came when Girmay and Ewan found themselves on the front inside the last few hundred metres and it all dawned on us that, of course, the in-form Eritrean and his pocket-rocket Australian counterpart had the uphill armoury to last the course. When they