Giro d'Italia 2020 Stage 2 - as it happened

ByTom Owen

Updated 04/10/2020 at 15:06 GMT

Giro d'Italia 2020 Stage 2 live - join us for live text commentary on Stage 2 of the Giro, a 149km ride from Alcamo to Agrigento. Geraint Thomas and Simon Yates both enjoyed a super start on the Stage 1 time trial and both British GC contenders will be looking to negotiate Sage 2 safely, with the course featuring a punchy uphill finish.

Thomas up to third overall

That's confirmed then, Ganna keeps pink. Almeida stays second.

Thomas and Tobias Foss both move up a place at the expense of Mikkel Bjerg into third and fourth respectively.

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Ganna should hold onto pink

He looked to cross the line in the same group as Joao Almeida (currently second on GC).

Michael Matthews won the sprint for fourth.

Diego Ulissi wins stage 2 of the Giro d'Italia!

Peter Sagan takes second ahead of Mikkel Honoré of Deceuninck–Quick-Step.

UAE Team Emirates played that perfectly and the pace set by Visconti did just enough to wreak havoc.

Mikkel Honoré in the mix too

Sagan follows Ulissi and Matthews can't hold his wheel

Flamme rouge

And it's Sagan and Matthews best placed.

UAE looking to make this hard through Visconti and Ulissi.

2km to go!

It's basically chaos. No clear team taking control. Bora, Mitchelton, Sunweb all present. Demare loses contact.

Blue jerseu Rick Zabel is out the back too. His time in the climber's jersey is over.

James Whelan crashes

The EF Pro Cycling rider is down on the deck. Looks relatively minor, luckily. His teammate Lawson Craddock is right up front at the business end of proceedings.

4km to go – Climb starts

It's all uphill from here, as we see Ineos melt away from the front and Arnaud Demare's Groupama come up to replace them.

5km to go – Elbows out

All the teams seem to think they have a rider for this puncheur's finish and they're jostling for position.

And with that, the break is broken...

As soon as he bagged that intermediate, De Gendt sat up. The others tried to prolong things for a wee bit longer, but they too have been absorbed.

10km to go – Time bonuses and intermediate points for the break

These baffling intermediate sprints, eh? No ciclamino jersey points at the second intermediate of the day, but there are bonus seconds. Which are, at this point, entirely irrelevant.

It's all terribly, terribly Giro.

De Gendt once again attacks out of the break to take the maximum prize money.

Whenever we see a front-on shot of the break we can make out the peloton drawing ever closer in the background. The Jaws music might as well be playing...

16km to go – Nobody taking it on yet

The main teams are moving to the front of the peloton but nobody is really driving the chase. Our leading quintet continue to work together well, but the gap is down to 41 seconds.

As I say that, some order is imposed on the chase by Bora.

Crash Nico Edet

Cofidis' torrid day continues with a crash for the French climber at the back of the peloton. Brent Bookwalter of Mitchelton Scott also down with a couple of AG2R riders.

Richeze having a chinwag

The Argentine leadout man par excellence is talking to the organiser's car. Wonder what that's about?

Here, while we ruminate on that mystery, is a spectator being hit by a stray bidon. This is Pure Cycling.

25km to go – Under a minute

This margin is ever dwindling, like the cycling public's interest in the opinions of Quinn Simmons. 53 seconds now!

33km to go – My Faves...

While it's hard to look past Matthews or Sagan for the win here today (if indeed, they succeed in catching De Gendt), we shouldn't ignore some of the other names in the peloton.

Diego Ulissi is a good shout for a second Italian stage win in a row, while Arnaud Demare might just be able to hang on with the other punchier fastmen. He'd probably prefer it to be 12 degrees C and drizzling though for it to be a really good one for him. Also in the mix will be Davide Ballerini and Enrico Battaglin, Giro stage winner in Sicily two seasons ago.

Breakaway Boiz™ still have 90 seconds.

36km to go – Nico Denz working hard on the front

The Sunweb rider is really emptying himself in the service of his leader Michael Matthews. The gap is down to 1'30" now and I think we'll see the long-expected 'Attack de De Gendt' very soon.

Here's more on the Vlasov abandon...

New disaster for Astana as Giro dark horse Vlasov abandons

50km to go – Perfectly poised

This final hour-or-so is going to be a doozy. Thomas De Gendt and his Breakaway Boiz™ have an advantage of 2'41", while the peloton is starting to ride harder under the leadership of team UAE Emirates.

The remaining terrain is undulating, which might suit De Gendt, but the roads are wide and that does improve the odds for the peloton.

65km to go – 3'04" for the break

Let's hear from Mr Michael Matthews, one of the hot favourites for the stage.

Michael Matthews on an 'explosive' stage and a chance for a puncheur's stage win

More bad juju for Astana...

Well, yesterday in my stage report I heralded Alexander Vlasov as the leader-elect of Astana after Jakob Fuglsang's dismal TT, but it looks as though the young Russian is climbing off and abandoning. Commentator's curse?

This has been a terrible start for the Kazakh team, what with losing Miguel Angel Lopez yesterday too in this horror crash.

Miguel Ángel López hospitalised after horror crash

80km to go – 5'10" for the leaders

The real star of this stage, or at least the middle part, is the landscape. Some utterly gorgeous parts of Sicily are on show, as we watch Salvatore Puccio lead the peloton through Menfi, his home town. Lots of people out with banners and that sort of thing.

90km to go – Yates expects attacks

Let's hope he's right...

Yates expects attacking racing after time gaps open up on first weekend

Giro Doggo

If a peloton passes through a dusty Sicilian village and a dog doesn't run into the road, is it even the Giro?

Double get-down for Consonni

In a disastrous sequence of events, Simone Consonni of Cofidis has crashed twice in the space of a couple of minutes. His tyres just seemed to slip out from under him on both occasions, maybe he rode through something slippery on the road? Or the first crash shook him up and threw him off his game.

Either way, by the time he was getting up from the second crash he looked pretty livid about life. Let's hope he can get himself together and rejoin the action.

102km to go – De Gendt goes long for the intermediate points

Thomas de Gendt is monstering this race and is making the rest of the breakaway look like cat 4 amateurs. He's just powered clear of them again to scoop up maximum points at the first intermediate sprint of the stage.

Unlike the Tour, there are two different classifications for the intermediate sprints and the more traditional points classification (for which the leader gets the ciclamino jersey). Ciclamino points are mostly gained at stage finishes.

That being said, in the first intermediate sprint, there are some points for both the intermediate classification and the ciclamino jersey classification. If it sounds confusing, that's because it is.

Salvatore Puccio takes the applause

The Ineos rider is from the island of Sicily and will be enjoying these first three stages on his home turf. He leads the peloton through the KOM point that we just mentioned and receives some warm applause from the spectators.

115km to go – Grenadiers form up

It's the team of pink jersey wearer, Filippo Ganna, leading the peloton. They have really let the gap balloon out in the last ten-or-so kilometres, it's now at over seven minutes.

The break have just sprinted it out for first classified climb of the stage. Thomas De Gendt basically rode away from his companions, ratcheting up the pace until there was nobody behind him. He must have designs on wearing the king of the mountains jersey later in the race, or perhaps he just loves points.

125km to go - 3'20" for the break

Thomas De Gendt & The Four Hangers On would be a superb name for a band. But it is not a band, it's the breakaway.

They have an advantage of just over three minutes at the moment.

Liege-Bastogne-Liege

I won't spoil it for you but I can tell you there's been a big performance from a British rider in the Women's monument, televised for the first time ever today on Eurosport Player.

Click here for the report by Kit Nicholson

135km to go – A crash there for van Empel

The Dutchman slips out on a relatively simple-looking turn. He's dusted himself down and has made his way back to the leading group.

The break

Ben Gastauer (AG2R La Mondiale) Mattia Bais (Androni Giocattoli - Sidermec) Alessandro Tonelli (Bardiani CSF Faizane) Thomas de Gendt (Lotto Soudal) Etienne van Empel (Vini Zabu)

They have a minute.

145km to go – Through the rolling Sicilian hills

The stage is underway and Thomas De Gendt is doing Thomas De Gendt things. He's pulled a small group away with him with a strong complement of second-tier invitee teams, plus one guy from AG2R La Mondiale. The gap is not yet unbridgeable, but the peloton don't see terribly interested in closing it down.

Might be a good day for De Gendt, this. Quite lumpy, relatively short. And if he didn't fancy his chances he wouldn't go for it.

More cutting-edge analysis

So EF Pro Cycling are riding this Giro in a new kit. With ducks on.

What the duck? How EF Pro Cycling already won the Giro

And for some reason this made the UCI angry.

EF Pro Cycling handed fine for duck-themed kit

Zabel defends blue

Two categorised climbs today, each worth a solitary point in the classification. Yesterday the organisers added a bit of fun to the TT by chucking a KOM point in right at the beginning.

It meant there as an additional jersey up for grabs than there otherwise might have been and we saw a couple of riders really giving it the beans, all in for the chance to wear something other than their team kit for at least a day in the race. Peter Sagan made the early running, but was beaten by the time of Rick Zabel.

Zabel starts the race today in the maglia azzurra. It'll be interesting to see if he defends it – you'd imagine he'll struggle to win this finish so his best bet is to get himself in the breakaway.

For the full story on yesterday's TT stage, read our report.

Ganna wins opening Giro stage for Ineos as Thomas makes statement of intent

Looks like being a puncheur's finish

The parcours today is lumpy, more than anything. None of the climbs are too strenuous, with a tough uphill finish to cap off the stage. At 149km, it's also very short for a Grand Tour stage...

It's looking like a golden opportunity for Peter Sagan or Michael Matthews to seize the maglia ciclamino.

Ciao tutti!

And welcome all, except Quinn Simmons, back to the Giro d'Italia 2020 live blog

I'm Tom Owen and I'll be shepherding you through this exciting looking second Sicilian stage of the Giro.

Wiggins analysis: 'Brilliant' Ineos the team to beat again

Ineos Grenadiers are once again the team to beat at the Giro d’Italia, says Bradley Wiggins, after a fantastic first stage which saw them respond superbly to their travails at the Tour de France.

Dave Brailsford’s outfit had a Tour to forget as leader Egan Bernal abandoned with injury problems and after wilting in the face of domination from Jumbo-Visma, even if it was Tadej Pogacar who ended up in yellow after one of the greatest upsets in cycling history.

But led by Geraint Thomas for the Giro, Ineos are a seemingly force renewed and as well as seeing Filippo Ganna come away with the stage win after a blistering time trial on Saturday, Thomas also put some substantial time into some of his GC rivals to get his title bid off to a superb start.

Speaking on his Eurosport podcast, Wiggins said that with the likes of Rohan Dennis, Ben Swift and Jonathan Castroviejo riding in support of Thomas, this was indeed a very different Ineos Grenadiers team.

“They looked like the team we always knew they were really,” said Wiggins.

“They've got a strong squad here. They have picked up where they left off in other years and I think they are going to be a squad to contend with, as they have already proved.

“They are almost a completely different team to the Tour team, but in so many other ways as well. Just in their presence.

How to watch the Giro d'Italia live– TV & live streaming

The 103rd edition of the Giro d'Italia will be shown live on eurosport.co.uk and the Eurosport app.

Each day the Eurosport Player and the Eurosport app will stream uninterrupted coverage of each stage. We will also have rolling coverage online on eurosport.co.uk and our social channels.

And don't forget, we are bringing you daily podcasts from the Bradley Wiggins Show - check in with your podcast platform of choice each evening.

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