Tirreno-Adriatico 2014 - Stage 7

Tirreno-Adriatico 2014 concluded once again with a time trial, this year it was a 9.1 kilometre test around San Benedetto del Tronto. The top tier of time triallists were all present at Tirreno-Adriatico, with favourites for the race being reigning world champion Tony Martin, four-time world champion Fabian Cancellara and 2012 Olympic Gold medallist Bradley Wiggins. 

Men such as Alex Dowsett, Luke Durbridge and Adriano Malori would be worthy challengers though, and it was Alex Dowsett, who was sixth out of the start house, who set the early benchmark of ten minutes and thirty three seconds. Tom Dumoulin was the man to beat it after around an hour, but Adriano Malori was quick to beat the time.

His time was quick, ten minutes thirteen seconds, but it was still expected that the big guns would beat the time. Tony Martin was the first of the big three to attempt to beat Malori's time, but he failed to do so, to the surprise of the Italian himself. He was fifteen seconds down on Malori, and it was Wiggins who would try next. 

He too failed, falling eleven seconds short, and when Fabian Cancellara also fell short by six seconds, it looked like the Italian would be taking out the stage win. He would in the end, and the attention turned to the times of the general classification contenders. All of the top three, Contador, Quintana and Roman Kreuziger stayed in the same positions, with Quintana improving his position by three seconds.

Jean-Christophe Peraud moved from fifth to fourth, swapping places with Julian Arredondo of Trek Factory Racing. Mikel Nieve of Sky Procycling was the biggest loser of the day, as he dropped from sixth to tenth overall after a bad time trial station. The attention was rightly on Alberto Contador however, who added another stage race to his palmares, sending a psychological message to Christopher Froome ahead of July.