With all the logical media attention at the Giro d’Italia about UAE Team Emirates-XRG’s enforced switch into stage hunters after their GC contenders crashed out, UAE’s dramatic strike rate in the first week has slightly eclipsed another team’s impressive near-parallel run of success.
While unable to match UAE’s hat-trick of stage triumphs, during the Giro’s nine-day trek from Bulgaria to Tuscany, XDS Astana went toe to toe with the double first week winners Soudal-QuickStep and Visma-Lease a Bike. That was thanks to their clinching victories on stage 2 and stage 6, the former also making Thomas Silva the first ever racer from Uruguay to claim the pink jersey, and the second going to Italian veteran Davide Ballerini in the crash-marred finale in Naples.
Together with UAE, this will make Astana a very interesting team to follow in the second week, where with the GC looking increasingly clear and the big mountain stages for the crunch overall battles yet to come in week 3, on paper breakaways should abound. But while not forgetting their options in sprints – that was how Ballerini got his win, after all – as Bettiol says, XDS Astana will also very much be keeping their options open on much longer-distance moves, too.
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