Adriano Malori (Lampre-Merida) missed the chance of a seasonal hat trick in the individual time trial in Ljubljana as an 8.8 km prologue started the Tour de Slovenie yesterday. Malori finished 16 seconds adrift of Svein Tuft (Orica-GreenEDGE) to finish 5th.  Earlier in the season Malori took victories in the Coppi e Bartali and Bayern Rundfahrt time trials.

"It was a quite short and fast time trial, with a technical final part and most of the last kilometre on cobblestones,” Malori explained. “I could not start at a fast pace, so I was immediately trailing Tuft.
I raised the speed and I succeeded in reaching the halfway point in the same time as the Canadian, but then I could not maintain the pace and I lost seconds in the final technical part.
I would have preferred to obtain a victory in view of the Italian championships that will still be my next main target."

Malori won the Italian ITT championship in 2011.