'It felt like a 3.5-hour training ride' - Vingegaard stays safe as Giro opens with chaotic sprint finish

The 109th edition of the race began in Bulgaria on Friday, with the peloton rolling out from Nessebar for a largely flat 147-kilometre stage to Burgas. 

As expected, the day was set up for the sprinters, with an early two-rider breakaway formed by Manuele Tarozzi and Diego Sevilla kept on a manageable gap by the sprint teams before being brought back with just over 20 kilometres remaining.

From there, the tension steadily increased as teams began preparing for the first bunch sprint of the race. Visma | Lease a Bike, however, had little interest in joining the battle at the front. Instead, Jonas Vingegaard and his teammates opted to sit further back in the bunch, a tactic the team has used before on flat and nervous Grand Tour stages.

“We rode with the tactic of sitting further back, as we have done a few times now,” Vingegaard said afterwards to Feltet.dk. “It seems to work well for us. Especially today, with the wide roads, there was not too much danger. Even if there had been a crash, we would have been able to come back.”

That approach proved effective. Inside the final kilometre, a heavy crash near the front of the peloton brought much of the bunch to a halt. Only a small group was left to sprint for the stage victory, with Paul Magnier taking the win and the first maglia rosa of this year’s Giro.

Vingegaard did not see the incident from his position further back, but he crossed the line safely along with the rest of his team.

“I just hope everyone is okay,” the Dane said. “It looked like a bad crash, but it happened right at the front, and I was further back. We got through the day safely, and the team did a good job.”

For the general classification riders, the stage had been relatively straightforward until the final kilometres. Vingegaard described most of the day as little more than a controlled opening ride, with the intensity only rising late on.

“It felt like a 3.5-hour training ride today,” he said. “Maybe only the final 10 kilometres meant it was not completely a training ride.”

Sports director Marc Reef was also satisfied with how Visma | Lease a Bike handled the first day of the race. The team’s main objective was to avoid unnecessary risks and reach the finish without damage.

“The most important thing for us today was to get to the finish safely,” Reef said on the website of the team. “The guys made it into the final five kilometres without any issues, which meant there was no longer any risk of losing time. There is always a lot at stake on the opening stage of a Grand Tour, and things went seriously wrong in the final kilometre. We had decided to stay in the background during the finale.”

The Giro continues on Saturday with another stage in Bulgaria, finishing in Veliko Tarnovo after 221.1 kilometres. The finale is expected to be more demanding, with a category three climb and several technical sections likely to make the race harder to control.

“Tomorrow’s stage has a difficult finish with several technical sections,” Reef said. “There are many riders who can dream of victory. For us, the main goal remains to get through the first three days in Bulgaria as well as possible.”