Italy smiles again as Ulissi wins Giro stage 2

Italian Diego Ulissi of the UAE team won an uphill dash for the line on stage 2 of the Giro d’Italia yesterday as compatriot Filippo Ganna kept the overall leader’s pink jersey.
The victory was Ulissi’s seventh on the Giro and follows Ganna’s home crowd pleasing win on Saturday.
Race favourite, Ineos captain Geraint Thomas, and the main contenders for the three-week event all finished together on the Sicilian hilltop.
On a sizzling afternoon the peloton left Alcame to run through the Valley of the Temples with their Minoan archaeological ruins, but the southern coast chalk cliffs and rolling breakers out at sea provided an equally attractive backdrop.
Thomas’ Ineos kept tabs on an escape group all afternoon and rolled them in at the bottom of a sharp 4km climb.
Simon Yates said yesterday’s stage two was the start of the real Giro after Saturday’s windy individual time trial and his team set the pace on the hill.
Peter Sagan looked set for a surprise win but Ulissi’s late acceleration with 100m to go sealed the day.
Sicily stepped in to host the first four days of the Giro after original hosts Budapest pulled out when the coronavirus crisis exploded in March.
Today’s third stage is a 150km run through the dead centre of Sicily to a summit finish on the Island’s main volcano Mount Etna, with the final 4km through lava fields on the upper reaches of its lunar landscape.
The race then heads up the east coast of the country, cuts through the mountains and swoops back through Milan in three weeks time.
Meanwhile, Tour de France runner-up Primoz Roglic won the Liege-Bastogne-Liege Monument classic over 257 kilometres yesterday, pipping Julian Alaphilippe on the line while the world champion was raising his arms in celebration.
Frenchman Alaphilippe left his sprinting line in a group of five, hampering Swiss Marc Hirschi in the process, and with victory in sight, stopped pedalling, making a debutant mistake.
But Slovenian Roglic, who lost the Tour’s yellow jersey in the final time trial earlier this month, pursued his effort and crossed the line first.
“It’s unbelievable, it was so close. Never stop believing It’s a few centimetres, it’s incredible that I managed to win,” said Roglic.
“In the end I managed to win something, no?”.
Alaphilippe was second and Hirschi, second at the world championships and winner of the Fleche Wallonne classic on Wednesday, came home third.
For his first race with the world champion’s rainbow jersey, Alaphilippe certainly expected a different outcome.
The Frenchman’s expected brutal attack came 500 metres from the top of the Cote de la Roche-aux-Faucons, the last climb situated 13 kilometres from the line.
Hirschi managed to follow, with Tour champion Tadej Pogacar of Slovenia and Roglic joing them further down the road. Another Slovenian, Matej Mohoric, came back in the final straight and launched the sprint that Alaphilippe thought he had won.