UAE DS on Yates, Del Toro and Ayuso - "Ayuso was maybe hoping for a better TT, but he was a little bit influenced by that crash"

UAE Team Emirates - XRG have shown themselves quite strongly in the first weekend of the Giro d'Italia, not sending any of their riders on the attack or spending more energy than they needed, but keeping all of their potential GC options safe in some days that were rather tense at times.

When asked about Isaac del Toro, steadily evolving as a GC rider within the team, Fabio Baldato was quick to shift away any possible pressure from the Mexican in words to Cyclingnews: "The other two are the leaders, and he's racing without any pressure. But if we need him to be there to support the others, then hopefully he can be there."

On Adam Yates, who starts this Giro very much under the radar after a modest early season, the Italian has quite a lot of good feedback after the time-trial: "He did super. If you look at the time splits on the climb, he was actually capable of the same time as Jay Vine. I asked Adam yesterday and he said he was pleased. And that climbing performance, that was a good sign". 

The team's main focus however is on Juan Ayuso, who suffered a small crash on stage 1, which then slightly influenced his performance in the time-trial. There is some time to take back on Primoz Roglic already, but there are no alarms ringing within the Emirati team in search of the pink jersey:

"The Giro's three weeks long, though and at the end of the day, it's 16 seconds. More or less what we expected. Some riders were suffering from the first stage, because it wasn't easy with the crashes. Ayuso was maybe hoping for a better TT, but he was a little bit influenced by that crash and you lose confidence on roads that are not safe and really slippery. It's not the same. And it's better to be safe than sorry."