Thursday 19 May 2016 15:39, UK
The battle for the pink jersey remains tight after an eventful and intriguing opening week of the Giro d’Italia.
Gianluca Brambilla is the current race leader, but the big favourites are all queuing up behind within close proximity of each other.
Here, we look at the key talking points from week one…
When Mikel Landa's started his Giro with a bad result in stage one's time trial and then a poor performance on stage six's summit finish, it looked like he wasn't in condition to challenge for overall victory.
But it has all started to come together for the Team Sky rider over the past two days, with a much-improved climbing display on stage eight being followed by a superb performance on stage nine's time trial.
He is still 25 seconds down on Vincenzo Nibali and 23 seconds adrift of Alejandro Valverde overall, but given that most expected his deficit to be far worse and that his preferred mountain stages are still to come, Landa's opening week has to be seen as a resounding success.
Dumoulin's Giro has been the exact opposite of Landa's. It looked like he was primed for an assault on overall victory after winning stage one's time trial and then dropping all of his rivals on stage six's summit, but his challenge has seemingly collapsed over the past two days.
First he sustained heavy losses on stage eight and he then made only slender gains on stage nine's time trial, a day he had been expected to put significant time into his rivals.
He is still very much in the thick of the general classification battle - five seconds down on Nibali and 20 seconds ahead of Landa - but given that the race is now heading towards the mountains and Dumoulin appears to out of climbing form, it's difficult to see how he can remain in contention.
Dumoulin wasn't the only rider whose pink jersey hopes suffered a major blow in Sunday's time trial, because Esteban Chaves, Rafal Majka and Ilnur Zakarin also lost damaging amounts of time.
Majka and Chaves' poor performances left them 52 seconds and 1min 38sec down on Nibali overall respectively, while Zakarin's two crashes left him 1min 16sec adrift.
Their hopes of a place in the top five are still very much alive, but it will take some remarkable performances in the mountains for them to revive any chances of a place on the podium, let alone overall victory.
Nibali isn't actually the best-placed of the pre-race favourites, because Steven Kruijswijk has silently and effectively positioned himself in fourth overall, two seconds ahead of the Italian.
Kruijswijk, a 28-year-old Dutchman from LottoNL-Jumbo, finished seventh at last year's Giro and, on evidence so far, he appears poised to at least repeat that result this time, if not better it.
At the same point of last year's race, he was 10min 39sec down on eventual winner Alberto Contador - mainly because of one disastrous day when he lost eight and a half minutes - but he then surrendered only 14 more seconds to the Spaniard in the rest of the race.
This year he has an advantage rather than a deficit, and if he can hold form like he did in 2015, a challenge for overall honours - or at least a place on the podium - is not out of the realms of possibility.
Primoz Roglic appears to be from that breed of people who are irrationally and irritatingly good at all sports.
The 26-year-old Slovenian used to be a ski jumper but quit when he realised he wouldn't be the best in the world and took up cycling instead.
After three years with the third-tier Adria Mobil team, he was snapped up by LottoNL-Jumbo this season and has already delivered a win in the Giro's stage nine time trial and a narrow second in the stage one time trial.
Roglic admitted Sunday was his first competitive time trial over 10km. The fact he won it is a sign of a frightening talent.
