Ganna scorches to win in Tour de La Provence prologue

Italian Filippo Ganna (INEOS Grenadiers) scorched through the prologue at 52.8 kilometres an hour to take out the opening day’s racing at the Tour de La Provence in comfortable fashion.

Filippo Ganna of INEOS Grenadiers wins the prologue at Tour de La Provence. Source: Getty Images

Watch the Tour de La Provence LIVE on SBS On Demand nightly, with replays and highlights available the next day for catch-up.

The time trial world champion made short work of the 7.1km course in Berre-l'Étang, taking just over eight minutes to take the win ahead of INEOS Grenadiers teammate Ethan Hayter, beating him by 12 seconds. Tobias Ludvigsson (Groupama-FDJ) was a close third, less than a second further behind, after sitting in the hotseat for much of the stage.

It was Ganna's second time trial win of the year after he claimed the final stage of Etoile de Bessèges, and the second Tour de La Provence victory of his career after he claimed a time trial victory in 2019.

"To come back to Provence and win again is really nice," Ganna said, "my first victory in a WorldTour team I did here. To come back, it's nice to see another win after three or four days. It's a good start to the season."

"Now we think to the next stages to improve with the team and cross our fingers. Tomorrow is a really hard stage because there's a lot of wind. Maybe it will be possible to cut the bunch, we'll see. We just have to be ready."

Most of the pre-race favourites had decent starts to the race, with Julian Alaphilippe (QuickStep Alpha Vinyl) the strongest, with defending champion Ivan Sosa (Movistar) conceding the most time of the climbers, losing over a minute to Ganna.

The Tour de La Provence continues with Stage 1, a 152 kilometre route for the sprinters to Les Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer. Watch from 2315 AEDT on SBS On Demand, or catch-up with highlights and the full replay on the SBS Cycling Central website.