The start of the Giro d'Italia for LAMPRE-MERIDA was not at the level of the high media exposure that the team had received in the days before the kick off thanks to the various interesting topics concerning the team (internationality of the roster, presentation of the new bike Merida Scultura, top quality Italian riders like Modolo and Ulissi).

In the first stage, a team time trial, the blue-fuchsia-green team covered the 17.6 km from San Lorenzo al Mare to Sanremo in 20'25" (average speed of 51,722 km/h), taking 21st, 59" slower than the winning team Orica GreenEdge.

Sports director Orlando Maini analyzed the team performance: "The trainings, the study of the course, the setting of the details in the past days were made in the best possible way, but they were not confirmed today. 

"The performance was not at a high level, some of our riders could not be as competitive as we could expect, probably the emotion played a bad role.

"We were aware we could have not been able to compete at the same level as the top specialist teams, but we aimed to do better than what we did: this is a motivation to try to achieve a good result already in tomorrow's stage."