Elia Viviani Sprints to Stage 2 Win at the Giro d'Italia
BMC Racing's Rohan Dennis pulls on the Magila Rosa after taking intermediate sprint points
Stage 2 was a 167 flat affair from Haifa to Tel Aviv.
Lars Bak and Davide Ballerini started the breakaway with Guillaume Boivin joining them after 30 kms. The peloton let them go and the gap increased to 3 min 3 secs
The breakaway reached the KOM climb of the day, a 2.65 km climb at 5.3% with the peloton only secons behind. Enrico Barbin bridged across to take the mountain points and the breakaway was swallowed up.
The BMC train were smart and led out Australian Rohan Dennis to take maximum intermediate sprint points. With a bonus 3 seconds he pulled on the maglia rosa on the road.
With 53 kms to go Guillaume Boivin attacked again and goit a gap of 1m 30 secs before the peloton chased down the Canadian with 17 kms to go.
It was a technical tight and frantic sprint finish, Viviani has to do a lot of work in the final km to to get up to the front, but he was the strongest and out sprinted Jakub Mareczko and Sam Bennett.
VIDEO: 2018 Giro d'Italia Stage 2 Highlights
2018 Giro d'Italia Stage 2 Top 10
1 Elia Viviani (Ita) Quick-Step Floors 3:51:20
2 Jakub Mareczko (Ita) Wilier Triestina-Selle Italia
3 Sam Bennett (Irl) Bora-Hansgrohe
4 Niccolo Bonifazio (Ita) Bahrain-Merida
5 Sacha Modolo (Ita) EF Education First-Drapac p/b Cannondale
6 Clement Venturini (Fra) AG2R La Mondiale
7 Ryan Gibbons (RSA) Dimension Data
8 Manuel Belletti (Ita) Androni Giocattoli-Sidermec
9 Baptiste Planckaert (Bel) Katusha-Alpecin
10 Jean-Pierre Drucker (Lux) BMC Racing Team
2018 Giro d'Italia GC after Stage 2
1 Rohan Dennis (Aus) BMC Racing Team 4:03:21
2 Tom Dumoulin (Ned) Team Sunweb 0:00:01
3 Victor Campenaerts (Bel) Lotto Soudal 0:00:03
4 José Gonçalves (Por) Katusha-Alpecin 0:00:13
5 Alex Dowsett (GBr) Katusha-Alpecin 0:00:17
6 Pello Bilbao (Spa) Astana Pro Team 0:00:19
7 Simon Yates (GBr) Mitchelton-Scott 0:00:21
8 Maximilian Schachmann (Ger) Quick-Step Floors 0:00:22
9 Tony Martin (Ger) Katusha-Alpecin 0:00:28
10 Domenico Pozzovivo (Ita) Bahrain-Merida