Richie Porte (Sky) continued his excellent start to the season when he took a hugely dominant solo win in the first mountain stage of the Giro del Trentino. After his Sky team had whittled down the peloton, the captain attacked with less than 3km to go in the hardest part of the final climb and distanced Mikel Landa (Astana) and Damiano Cunego (Nippo-Vini Fantini) to take both the victory and the leader’s jersey in the four-day race.

Last year Richie Porte had hoped to go for the victory in the Giro d’Italia but several bouts of illnesses meant that he never made it to the start of the Italian grand tour. The year ended as one to forget for the Australian who ended the season prematurely.

Fast forward 12 months and Porte finds himself in a completely different situation. In 2015, the Australian has been unstoppable and has had the perfect build-up to the Giro where he is again expected to lead Sky.

Today Porte confirmed his status as one of the two big favourites to win the Italian grand tour when he took a hugely dominant solo victory in the first mountain stage of the Giro del Trentino which is usually the key preparation race for the big event in Italy. After the near-miss in the opening team time trial, he showed that he is ready for the upcoming battle when he dropped everybody on the steepest part of the final climb to the finish in Brentonico.

On the penultimate climb of Monte Velo which is the hardest climb of the entire race, Sky had played with the muscles and it was a select group of just 18 riders that crested the summit. Porte still had teammates  Leopold König, David Lopez and Kantantsin Siutsou at his side and the Sky quartet were joined by Romain Bardet, Domenico Pozzovivo, Jean-Christophe Peraud (Ag2r), Mikel Landa, Diego Rosa, Dario Cataldo (Astana), Ryder Hesjedal (Cannondale-Garmin), Gianfranco Zilioli (Androni), Stefano Pirazzi, Edoardo Zardini (Bardiani), Damiano Cunego (Nippo), Rodolfo Torres (Colombia), Louis Meintjes (MTN-Qhubeka) and Jose Mendes (Bora-Argon 18) to form a select group of climbers.

On the descent, Merhawi Kudus (MTN-Qhubeka) managed to rejoin the leaders before they hit the bottom of the final climb. Here Siutsou hit the front and the strong Belarusian set the pace for most of the ascent, distancing Kudus, Zilioli and Hesjedal before he swung off with less than 3km to go.

This was the signal for Porte to make his move and only Landa tried to follow the strong Australian who passed the 2km to go banner with an advantage of 5 seconds over the Basque and 14 seconds over the rest of the group. At the flamme rouge, he had extended it to 15 seconds while Cunego, Zardini, König and Torres followed at 25 seconds.

Porte never looked back and he reached the finish with a 16-second advantage over Landa to firmly stamp his authority of the race. Cunego won the sprint for third, 32 seconds too late.

With the win, Porte takes the overall lead and he goes into stage 3 with a 24-second advantage over Landa. However, he needs to be at the top of his game to defend his position as tomorrow’s stage offers another summit finish. On a day with constant ups and downs, the riders will tackle a category 2 and category 1 climb in the second half, before the descend to the bottom of the final climb to the finish in Fierozzo val dei Mocheni.

The queen stage

After the opening team time trial, the Giro del Trentino headed into the mountains on the second day when the riders tackled 168.2km from Dro to a mountaintop finish in Brentonico. After a hilly first half with several uncategorized ascents, the riders reached the hilly second half where they would first tackle a category 2 climb before they hit the mighty Monte Velo which summited just 24.9km from the finish. From here, they descended to the bottom of the 8.5km final climb which was not very difficult but had a steep section with around 2km to go.

The riders gathered in Dro under a beautiful sunny sky, with Ted King (Cannondale-Garmin) being the only non-starter after his crash in the team time trial, and they got the race off to a fast start. Andrea Piechele (Bardiani) launched an immediate attack but after 4km of racing, he was brought back.

The break is formed

Instead, Lasse Norman Hansen (Cannondale-Garmin), Simone Sterbini (Bardiani), Mirko Tedeschi (Southeast), Aleksandr Evtushenko (Rusvelo), Rasmus Quaade (Cult) and Lukas Pöstlberger (Tirol) took off after 9km of fast racing. While the peloton slowed down, Iuri Filosi (Nippo-Vini Fantini) and Miguel Angel Benito (Caja Rural) took off in pursuit.

After 23km of racing, the two chasers were still 1.30 behind while the peloton was at 4.00 and this was the signal for the peloton to up the pace. While they kept the gap at around 4 minutes, the chase duo started to lose ground and at the 44km mark, they were 1.40 behind. Moments later, they sat up and were caught by the peloton which was 3.52 behind at the 50km mark.

Bora-Argon 18 in control

The early work was being done by the Bora team and they continued to keep the gap at around 4 minutes. Meanwhile, Hansen beat Pöstlberger and Evtushenko in the first intermediate sprint.

At the midpoint of the stage, the gap was still 3.55 but now the break started to dig a bit deeper. They managed to extend their advantage to 4.40 before they hit the first climb.

Evtushenko drops off

As they started to climb, Evtushenko got distanced and halfway up the ascent, he had already lost 1.25. In the run-in to the climb, the peloton had brought the gap down to 3.51 but as they hit the ascent, they lost ground. Pöstlberger led Sterbini and Hansen over the top while the bunch caught Evtushenko.

At the top of the climb, the gap was 4.14 but as they headed down the descent, the fight for position started. Hence the gap was down to 3.08 at the 130km mark.

Sky hit the front

As they hit Monte Velo – the hardest climb of the entire race – Sterbini and Pöstlberger distanced their companions but compared to the peloton, they were losing ground quickly. Sky had now hit the front and were doing a lot of damage and they quickly brought back a few riders who tried to attacked.

At the 133km mark, the gap was only 1.28 and one kilometre later, it was down to 39 seconds. Pöstlberger turned out to be the strongest as he managed to distance Sterbini while Sky had now whittled the group down to 21 riders, with race leader Benedetti among the riders to have been dropped. At the 135km mark, he was 2 minutes behind the peloton.

A small group reaches the top of Monte Velo

The group had been whittled down to just Pozzovivo, Peraud, Bardet, Cataldo, Landa, Rosa, Porte, König, Lopez, Siutsou, Zilioli, Pirazzi, Zardini, Cunego, Torres, Meintjes, Kudus, Mendes and Hesjedal and they managed to catch both Sterbini and Pöstlberger. While the former was dropped immediately, the latter did well to hang onto Sky’s brutal pace.

Pöstlberger and Kudus got distanced 1km from the top and it was Torres who led Siutsou, Pozzovivo, Porte and König over the top. At this point, white jersey holder Emanuel Buchmann (Bora-Argon 18) had been distanced by 1.50.

Siutsou does some damage

Kudus managed to rejoin the group on the descent while Joe Dombrowski (Cannondale) crashed out of the first chase group. Moments later, they hit the final climb and it was Siutsou who hit the front to set a brutal pace.

Kudus was the first to be dropped and later Zilioli and Hesjedal also got distanced. Meanwhile, Siutsou, Lopez and Porte were lined out on the front and 16 riders were still together as they entered the final 3km.

Pirazzi was the first to try an attack but Siutsou quickly shut it down. Instead, Porte made his move in the hardest section and from here he soloed away to stamp his authority firmly on the race.