Giro d'Italia Daily - Team Time Trial Day

Today's stage: Team time trial. One of the most important early stages as it helps shape the pecking order much more than even the short Individual Time Trial on Stage 1.

Who won today's stage? Garmin-Barracuda took the stage as expected (that team specializes in the TTT) over surprising Katusha by five seconds. Everyone else was a bit further back.

What matters in the GC race? Lots. In the short tern, Ramunas Navardauskas (Garmin) took the leader's pink jersey after his team's stage win. The other big winners on the day were Ryder Hesjedal (Garmin) and Joaquin Rodriguez (Katusha). Both took about 20-30 seconds on their GC rivals.

Biggest surprise: Katusha's ride was completely shocking. Rodriguez is known as a terrible time trialist and the team had to keep him all the way through or kill its GC hopes. Finishing second by only five seconds is a huge surprise, especially without a ton of big name cronomen on the roster.

Biggest disappointment: Team Sky was tipped by many as one of the favorites for the stage (behind Garmin of course). The team underperformed today finishing ninth on the stage and losing 30 seconds to Garmin.

Other items of note: Taylor Phinney (BMC) did start and finish the stage today, but his team finished 10^th, 31 seconds back ending his time in the pink jersey. Third place Alex Rasmussen (Garmin) was dropped early by his team meaning he got whatever his time was crossing the finish line. This is also what allowed Navardauskas to take the pink jersey.

What is coming tomorrow? Another sprint stage. Tomorrow might actually be the flattest 200 km stage I've ever seen in Italy. If Mark Cavendish (Team Sky) is fully recovered from the crash a couple of days ago, expect him to win the stage. If not it will likely be Matt Goss (Orica GreenEdge) or Mark Renshaw (Rabobank).