The pink jersey holder Cadel Evans and his reliable domestique Steve Moabito both made it clear that it was never BMC intention to take the highly coveted maglia rosa in the first week of the Giro d’Italia, as they would prefer to avoid any additional responsibility so early in the race. While American team’s sports director confirmed their words, he also insisted that the squad is strong enough to maintain the lead.

A third place in the opening team time trial and highly fortunate development of happenings on last Thursday’s stage to Montecassino made it virtually impossible for Evans to avoid retaining the maglia rosa.

Since letting other general classification contenders to gain time on the BMC leader was never an option, the American team hoped to crown Saturday’s escapee Mauro Finetto (Neri Sottoli) a temporary Giro d’Italia leader, but this concept never turned into reality as other teams didn’t have a plan of allowing the early breakaway to decide the stage.

The BMC sports director Mauro Finetto admitted that they weren’t interested in taking the leadership so early in the race, however, he made a point that with a strong squad carrying such responsibility might be easier than “loaning” the pink jersey some rider from randomly formed breakaway, as offering such cyclist a “second life” and re-entering general classification proved to be a dangerous maneuver in the past.

"It's not that we wanted to take it at any cost, and maybe at this point it might be better for Cadel not to have it and to leave him and the team calm," BMC directeur sportif Valerio Piva told Cyclingnews. "So it's not like we rode furiously behind to make sure we got the jersey, but we're still very happy to have it."

"It's hard to decide at the start of a stage what riders you would let go and the opening kilometres are always run off at high speed with a lot of attacks and you don't know exactly who is in the breaks," said Piva. "It's important that you don't let any riders get away who might be able to re-enter the general classification because they could become dangerous. In a big break, especially, there's always the risk that somebody dangerous could get away."

"We've a very balanced team that can work on the flat or on hilly stages, and we've got a couple of riders who can stay close to Cadel in the mountains - obviously, there's an exceptional Morabito, who is clearly in top condition, but I'd add Sanchez too because he's still recovering from the crash. He should be there in the last week," Piva said. "Unfortunately, we lost [Yannick] Eijssen in a crash and he would have been up there in the climbs too, but these things happen. The team is still strong."