Right on schedule, Filippo Ganna did not miss his appointment with his third success on the roads of Tirreno-Adriatico. The Piedmontese man – born in Verbania, on the shores of Lake Maggiore – honoured the Tricoulor he was wearing, not merely because he blazed it at full speed on the roads of Lido di Camaiore today (Ganna is national time trial champion), but also because the last three Italian successes in this competition all bear his signature. Indeed, the former ITT world champion had claimed the final time trial in San Benedetto del Tronto in 2020 and this same opening stage in Lido di Camaiore last year: to find an Italian flag waiving on the top step of the podium again, we have to go back to 2019, with Elia Viviani’s winning sprint in Foligno. For the previous one, we need a real time machine to take us all the way back to 2015, more precisely to Adriano Malori’s victory in another TT right in Lido di Camaiore.
Let’s face it, the “Race of the Two Seas” has never been a hunting ground for Italians. Luckily, Ganna has hit these roads again and improved our statistics one more time. But this victory is important from a personal point of view as well, it is the first since the historic Hour Record last October, as well as the first seasonal one after a series of podiums that were beginning to taste like a mockery.
