Early on, the likes of Gianni Moscon, Dries Devenyns, Nikias Arndt and Mads Pedersen all had various amounts of time in the hot seat.
It was French national time-trial champion, Remi Cavagna though, who laid out the first real marker time, beating Pedersen's time by 25 seconds with his effort of 35:42.
One of the world's premier time-trialists, Stefan Kung threatened to break the time of Cavagna. Although after starting positively, the Swiss opted for a bike change and seemed to lose all his momentum, eventually coming home 52 seconds down.
Wout van Aert was the next to mount a serious challenge to Cavagna, going quickest at the third intermediate time check and by the finish line he had edged out the Frenchman by 15 seconds, holding the lead when Tadej Pogacar and Jonas Vingegaard left the start ramp.
Simon Yates had started brightly and was looking to move up in the GC, reaching the first time check second quickest.
After Tadej Pogacar then reached the first time check the quickest by 25 seconds, Jonas Vingegaard went a further 16 seconds quicker to lay down a real marker early on.
Pogacar again was the quickest to reach the second time check, 19 seconds faster than anyone previously followed by a notable bike change.
Vingegaard then reached the second time check 31 seconds clear of the Slovenian and opted against changing his bike, instead the
Jumbo-Visma continued to press home his advantage.
The Dane had extended his leave even further to over a minute by the third time check.
So much quicker than his main rival was Vingegaard, the reigning Tour de France winner actually began to catch Pogacar as they headed towards the finish line.