As the team entered the final stretch, they had a minute to work with but the drag was long and they held 17 seconds on Quick-Step Floors by the time they hit the line. Italian Damiano Caruso sprinted to the front of the group to lead them over and put himself into the first blue jersey. As the team's GC hopes collapsed at Paris-Nice this week, the victory sets up the general classification campaign of Tejay van Garderen nicely. Nairo Quintana will also be satisfied with how his Movistar team performed. In Tuesday's pre-race press conference, Quintana had said the stage would be about limiting losses and they did that and more, clocking the third quickest time at just 22 seconds behind BMC. Orica-Scott was the only other team to dip below the 24-minute mark with their effort of 22:45, putting Adam Yates into a strong position ahead of the mountains. "Most of us are time trial specialists. We won like last year but faster than last year because we have two new riders in the team, Stefan Kung and Rohan Dennis who are really fast against the clock. They have made that difference today compared to last year," Caruso said before collecting his leader's jersey. "Maybe the weather conditions have also helped for a faster time. At the end I was first on the line, which enables me to wear the leader's jersey – it's a great honour. Racing at home in Italy with that jersey will be special. We'll see how far I can go with it. We're also racing for our leader Tejay van Garderen.
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