The second stage in the Giro d’Italia brought the first top-ten finish for Team Giant-Alpecin with a fourth place for Luka Mezgec in the bunch sprint. 

Along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea, the stage of 177km was colored by a breakaway of five. The gap was controlled by the sprinter’s teams including the efforts of Team Giant-Alpecin’s Tom Stamsnijder and Cheng Ji, as the last leader was caught back while entering the final local lap of 9.5km.

Under an extreme high pace the bunch sprint was prepared in the streets of Genova as Elia Viviani (Team Sky) was the first to cross the line. Mezgc sprinted to a steady fourth place.

Mezgec said: “My legs were good today. It was a hectic finale with lots of crashes. Unfortunately, also guys of us were involved so our sprint lead-out was disorganized.

“At the end I managed to get a good position but I spend too much energy to get it. The slightly uphill finish was very difficult today and to win we needed a perfect sprint preparation.“

Coach Addy Engels added: “The finale did not worked out according to our plan because of the chaos and crashed that took place as the important man for our lead-out, Bert [de Backer]  was hindered by one of those. With 2km to the finish, Luka and Nikias [Arndt] got isolated due to this and lost each other subsequently. They were unable to straighten that out in the final km.

“I am satisfied because it was the maximum result under these circumstances. Fortunately, we leave today’s battle unharmed and we need to wait for our next chance.”