Giro stage 2: Kittel kicks it, Bling takes pink

Stage 2: Belfast to Belfast, 219km

It was a wet and windy stage in Northern Ireland that ended as predicted with Marcel Kittel taking the first sprint of the Giro (almost certainly not his last). And although Svein Tuft lost the maglia rosa, his teammate Michael ‘Bling’ Matthews found it on his shoulders.

A rose-tinted stage

With the wind and the rain and the fact that Dan Martin crashed out yesterday, it could have been a subdued stage for the spectators today. Yet it was the fans at the side of the road who gave the stage its pop and sparkle up until the finishing sprint. There’s almost certainly no pink paint left in Northern Ireland with everything from garden fences to electricity pylons given a fresh coat for the peloton. And one wonders how long it’s going to take for all those horses, sheep and cows to go back to their normal colour.

Rumour has it, the pink fleece from these sheep goes to Paul Smith for next year’s maglia rosa design

Kittel is a giant

Not to cast aspersions on the other sprinters in this year’s Giro, but Marcel Kittel is surely the giant in this Giro. And I mean that literally. He’s twice the size of his rivals, yet he can hit the afterburners and make the little guys look like they’re stuck in molasses.

VeloVoices rider of the day

Belkin’s Maarten Tjallingii – if only because I finally know how to spell his name! He was out with the break for, well, almost the entire stage and didn’t give up when the rest of his breakers were scooped up, putting in a final all-or-nothing dig before getting caught at the 3km mark. That and he didn’t let the Neri Sottoli kit blind him to pick up all the KOM points to put him in blue.