Ag2r-La Mondiale have never excelled in team time trials and for the French team and their captain Domenico Pozzovivo, it was all about limiting their losses in yesterday's opening stage of the Giro d'Italia. However, the team did better than ever before to finish 10th just 58 seconds off the winning time, with Pozzovivo gaining time on a couple of his GC rivals.

While Ag2r have always excelled in the mountains, the team time trials have never belonged to their main strengths and the team has usually finished near the bottom of the standings in the collective discipline. Hence, the Frenchmen didn't have an awful lot of expectations for yesterday's opening stage of the Giro d'Italia.

With Patrick Gretsch, Matteo Montaguti and Maxime Bouet as driving forces, however, the team exceeded expectations when they closed the stage in 10th, losing just 3 seconds to Movistar, one of the pre-stage favourites. As a consequence, Domenico Pozzovivo takes on today's second stage in a much better position than expected.

“It’s a difficult exercise that doesn’t particularly suit us," manager Vincent Lavenus said. "Today it worked well, we didn’t make any technical errors and the team was homogeneous. We asked riders not to take risks, especially in wet turns, and they respected instructions.

"We aimed at placing Pozzovivo as close as possible to the other leaders and I think we can be satisfied with our performance. We observe that we are only 5’’ from taking 7th!

"This one of the best results in a team time-trial that we have achieved in a Grand Tour. Most of our riders are not specialists in this kind of effort but they coordinated it successfully and we demonstrated a very good cohesive spirit."

The team will be hopeful that Davide Appollonio will be in the mix in today's second stage.