stage 1 Giro ;
15º Ibarrola on 0:00"
Tour cyclist Bustelo sacrificed himself in a helpers role to make sure his teamcaptain finished in the front, and Bustelo did a great job.
And this was needed, because the others were not good enough to help in this stage. Bustelo himself finished in the 2nd group on 0:24"
stage 2 Giro ;
22º Neville ( free role )
Neville was probably too good to help and maybe he used too many energy in his free role tactic, but he scored some points.
And he was not needed as helper anyway, because Bell kept his teamcaptain in the front in the first 2 sections.
Unfortunately they both dropped to the 2nd group in s3, but now Ibarrola had help of the better helper Melnikov who started too slow.
And this flat cobble specialist did a perfect helpers job in the remaining sections, even in the final s5.
However, due to a mechanical breakdown in the crucial s5, Ibarrola could not follow and finished one group behind Melnikov.
Most likely this bad luck costed my GC rider 19 seconds.
104º Ibarrola on 1:21"
105º Bustelo ( free role ) on 1:21"
stage 3 Giro ;
29º Bustelo ( free role ) on 0:47"
Very unexpected extra points in this hills stage, I guess he had a lucky day and his leggs felt good.
Teamcaptain Ibarrola could have finished better because the helpers tactics were not good, he had just helpers in flat sections 1 and 3.
But it seems to me he wasted just 8 seconds due to the bad helpers tactic of mainly "masterhelper" Neville.
85º Ibarrola on 1:30"
The GC after 3 stages =
34º Bustelo on 1:10"
41º Ibarrola on 1:29"
Not a great start of this Giro.
Ibarrola has to ride 2 good time trials ánd 2 great cobble-mountain stages to compensate his bad hills skill (in also 2 upcoming stages).
But first the flat-cobble stage 4, he is not good at that either.
Despite this, he did very well in the cobble stage of Romandie compared to many GC rivals ; he finished as 59º on 2:41"
Hopefully he can ride such a successful damage control tactic again.
