A fast sprint stage was featured in the first road stage of the 98th Giro d’Italia on Sunday’s stage two. At 177 km the stage began in Albenga and ended on a technical circuit in the heart of Genova. Team Katusha riders Luca Paolini and Aleksandr Porsev worked to be part of the action, but taking the win by only a wheel was Italy’s native son Elia Viviani (Sky) with a time of 4:13.18. 

"There were a lot of crashes today and a few of our riders were involved. First Sergei Chernetckii crashed and then later Maxim Belkov, but both were able to finish the race and they are ok. In the final we had Luca in the front. He did a good job helping Alex to find position in the sprint. It was a powerful, uphill sprint. Porsev tried but was 15th on the stage," said team director Dmitry Konyshev.

The sprint opened up early but Viviani was patient, following the wheels and only coming around Moreno Hofland (Lotto NL-Jumbo) at the last minute to claim the win. Third place went to Andre Greipel (Lotto Soudal) who went long but couldn’t hold off a fast-charging Viviani. The average speed for today’s stage was 42,163 km/h.

A new race leader emerged with Michael Matthews of Orica-GreenEdge taking over from teammate Simon Gerrans, who stayed in second place. Rounding out the GC podium was Simon Clarke, all on the same time as winners of yesterday’s team time trial all on the same time. 

A break went early on the sunny and warm day, with 5 riders going clear to set the pace early and establish a healthy gap of more than nine minutes. While the sprint teams worked hard to bring the group back, many crashes on course halted the progress with the gap finally closed near 10 km to go.

Stage 3 comes on Monday with one of the shortest stages of the three week tour. At 136 km the stage begins in Rapallo and ends in Sestri Levante with two rated climbs on the course.