Filippo Ganna tests his legs with a late attack at Tirreno-Adriatico: "I wanted to see what my numbers were after 6.5 hours of racing"

Filippo Ganna was at the thick of action during third stage of Tirreno-Adriatico. When the leader of general classification got his long legs going with a little bit more than 3 kilometers to go, only person was able to respond - Mathieu van der Poel. That was enough to neutralize Ganna's attack.

"The weather was terrible and nobody wanted to keep up the pace with us. So it was hard to stay warm," Ganna sounded critical in post-race reactions collected by In de Leiderstrui. In this way, they went on a slow trot for hours, until the final climb came into view.

The workload was mostly on INEOS Grenadiers even though many teams had interesting riders for such profile. Eventually Ganna found understanding at Alpecin-Deceuninck. "I have to thank my teammates, who rode all day. On the final climb I asked Van der Poel if his team wanted to help and they did. I have to thank them for that, because other teams didn't."

When the INEOS men had had enough and Laurens De Plus couldn't set the pace with his GC ambitions, Ganna attacked. "Maybe that was too early, but I didn't want Laurens to take risks for me and set the pace. That's why I didn't wait for the sprint, even though I knew I was taking a risk. Van der Poel was strong in the final and closed the gap. Not so strange, because he wanted to win too. So I understood that, I would have done the same."

Ganna's attack was therefore prompted by a lack of manpower at INEOS, but it was also a good test for Milano-Sanremo, for example. "I wanted to test myself after 6.5 hours of racing and see what my numbers were. It was a good test for the classics, which are of course long races. I'm disappointed for my teammates that I couldn't give them a stage win, but my legs felt good. Maybe I'll try again, because going for a GC will be too hard anyway."