Birthday boy Sevin Tuft of Canada leads the Giro d'Italia tonight as a result of crossing the line at the front of the winning Orica GreenEdge team in todays team-time-trial in Belfast, but lets face it, Tuft is not going to be wearing that jersey in three weeks time when the race finally comes to a close. That honour will likely fall to one of the pre-race favourites and so GC eyes were on specific team times today as we looked to see who gained time and who lost time? Nobody won the Giro today, but a few now face an uphill battle to win back lost time on others after just 21.7 kilometres of racing.
Here is a look at the overall standings with regards to six names that coming into the race were picked out as being potential pre-race favourites.
1. Rigoberto Urán
2. Cadel Evans + 2 secs
3. Michele Scarponi + 33 secs
4. Nairo Quintana + 50 secs
5. Joaquim Rodriguez + 1-28
6. Ryder Hesjedal + 3-21
So as you can see, for Hesjedal it is essentially over. For Rodriguez he's already facing big gaps to overcome against riders he's likely to lose more time against in the individual time-trial later, while Uran and Evans look in great shape and can already afford to defend the time they now have in hand come the big mountains.
