Geoghegan Hart and Sivakov enact GC leader tricks at Giro d’Italia
Team Ineos' Tao Geoghegan Hart retained his seventh place overall, 35 seconds down on race leader Primoz Roglic (Jumbo-Visma), after a wet and windy second stage of the Giro d'Italia on Sunday.
"It was the first road stage and it's never easy, especially in a Grand Tour, to get everyone riding together," explained Ineos sports director Nicolas Portal on the team's website.
"They're used to it, but in a Grand Tour, you have 180 riders with a big bunch, where the tension is higher."
Twenty-four-year-old Geoghegan Hart rode himself into the top 10 on the opening-stage time trial at the Giro on Saturday. The team lost their GC contender, Egan Bernal, a week before the start of the race, when the Colombian climber broke his collarbone in a training crash.
It left a young and relatively inexperienced Giro squad with no real leader. Instead, Geoghegan Hart and 21-year-old Russian teammate Pavel Sivakov have been tasked with animating the race when they can – with the mountains a likely focus – while enjoying themselves and learning from the experience.
Both rode near the front of the peloton on the run-in to Fucecchio, keeping themselves out of trouble as the team have often done in recent Grand Tours with their more high-profile leaders. They finished side-by-side in 34th and 35th place, with Geoghegan Hart remaining seventh overall and Sivakov moving up two places to 26th at 1:01.
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