Despite finishing well below his second place overall at Tirreno-Adriatico last year, Rohan Dennis (BMC Racing) said his win in the final time trial will give him a confidence boost as he makes his final preparations for a general classification run at the Giro d`Italia in May. Dennis was never supposed to be BMC`s go-to GC guy at Tirreno this year, choosing instead to tailor his training toward the Italian Grand Tour in less than two months. The leadership role at Tirreno started with Richie Porte, who then had to withdraw before the start due to illness. `Once he was out, obviously, Damiano [Caruso] was called up as the leader for GC,` Dennis said during the post-race press conference. `I was hopeful that I could try and repeat what I did last year or go a little bit better, but sometimes it just doesn`t happen like that.`ADVERTISEMENT Dennis was on target for a good GC run over the seven-day race after BMC took out the opening team time trial. Dennis slotted into the runner-up spot behind Caruso, but things went downhill from there. A series of low placings over the next five days saw him heading into the time trial in 85th place, 36:59 behind leader Michal Kwiatkowski (Team Sky), while Caruso was second overall. Dennis spent stage 5 in a breakaway and collected three KOM points, but otherwise he was not a factor in the stages. That changed on Tuesday when he stormed over the 10km course in 11:14, unseating Mads Pedersen (Trek-Segafredo) from the hot seat by eight seconds and then holding off Jos van Emden (LottoNL-Jumbo) and Jonathan Castreviejo (Movistar) for the stage win. Better yet, Dennis` time was four seconds faster than his winning mark from the year before.
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