Last year Peter Sagan and Lizzie Deignan did their best in debunking the curse of the rainbow jersey with early season wins.  So far in 2017 repeat world champ Peter Sagan (Bora Hansgrohe) has not shown any effects having the rainbow jersey target on his back coming away with impressive wins at Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne and in stage 3 in Italy at the weeklong Tirreno-Adriatico stage race.  At the women’s world tour Ronde van Drenthe one day race in the Netherlands world champ Amalie Dideriksen sprinted to victory.  This win marked the Boels Dolmans’s racer’s first world tour win and just her fourth professional win.

Hardman Team Sky’s Geraint Thomas reversed his team’s horrible team time trial luck to take a win in stage 2 at the Tirreno-Adriatico stage race.  Sky’s time trial was marred by broken tri-spoke wheels to put it mildly.  More like exploding front wheels causing riders to skid to the ground.  See here Gianni Moscon deal with the issue.  So after losing all that time in the time trial, the team bounced back with aggressive riding towards the finish of stage 2.  Thomas tracked a move by Bob Jungels (Quickstep Floors), then surged himself breaking free in the last few kilometers building up a gap of 25 seconds before holding off the charging peloton.

Although Quickstep Floors Julian Alaphilippe lost the leader’s jersey in stage 7 at the Paris-Nice, it’s good for cycling to have French riders racing well.  Alaphilippe still maintained the best young rider jersey in his valiant effort to limit his losses up the queen stage long climb to the top of the Col de la Couillole outside of Nice.  Direct Energies Lilian Calmejane leads the king of the mountains jersey competition and Alaphilippe is in front in the points competition.