A stage like today usually ends in a bunch sprint finish, so there is little incentive for riders to go up the road and spend most of the day in the breakaway only to be reeled in by the sprinters’ teams in the final kilometres.

The presence of the Montechiaro d’Asti today provided that incentive for some of the smaller teams though.

The only categorised climb of the day was also the first one of this Giro and as such offered the chance for somebody to take the first king of the mountains jersey of the race and garner some publicity for themselves and their team.

To do so, potential escapees knew they only had to get to the top of the climb without being caught and the reward was worth the risk for three Italians: Filippo Tagliani, Umberto Marengo and Vincenzo Albanese, who jumped clear in the first couple of kilometres.

With nobody else willing to join the kamikaze move, the peloton, led by the Ineos team of race leader Filippo Ganna, settled down to a comfortable pace.

As their lead grew to around five minutes, I rolled along in the middle of the peloton alongside my cousin Dan Martin.

Although we were in the breakaway together at the Tour des Alpes a couple of weeks ago, back then we were in full-on race mode and there was no time to talk.

Today, though, we made up for that with a good hour-long chat about anything and everything.

Dan is in good form at the moment and I think he will be a contender in this Giro but this morning he told me that his Israel Start-Up Nation team are already one man down, after his Latvian team-mate Krists Neilands crashed on the way back to the hotel after yesterday’s time trial and broke his collarbone.

When the trio out front got a five-minute advantage, the Alpecin-Fenix, Lotto-Soudal and Jumbo-Visma teams each put a man on the front of the peloton for their respective sprinters and began to close the gap.

By the time Albanese outsprinted his breakaway companions to take the mountains jersey, the trio’s advantage had been cut to a minute and a half. They were left dangling there like a sprat on a hook until the peloton put the hammer down with about 30km to go.

Here, I rounded up my DSM team-mates and moved to the front as the pace increased dramatically.

For my DSM team, our main goal on a flat stage like today is to get our team leaders, Frenchman Romain Bardet and Aussie Jai Hindley, to the 3km-to-go mark safely. If a crash or mechanical happens after this marker, you are given the same time as the group you are in, so once you get to there safely you can breathe a bit easier without having to fight to stay at the very front.

Our other objective is to get our sprinter Max Kanter into a good enough position to have a fighting chance of getting a good result in the sprint finish.

Chris Hamilton, Michael Storer and myself kept Romain and Jai near the front on the left side of the road, just behind the Ineos train of race leader Ganna.

Wanting to get into a tight right-handed corner safely, I accelerated with about 4km to go and found myself right at the front on the left-hand side of the road.

A tight chicane a few hundred metres later saw me get swamped and lose a few places however.

Things were so hectic and fast-moving that I couldn’t take the chance of turning around to see where the guys were. Instead, I squeezed the radio mic inside my jersey and asked if they were OK as I battled to stay close to the front while also leaving a hole for Romain to sit in safely, if he was still behind me.

As we went under the 3km-to-go banner, I felt a tap on the back and looked to my right to see Romain say: “Good job.”

One kilometre later, when the sprinters’ teams stormed through on the opposite side of the road, Nikias Arndt followed the wave with Max in his slipstream as I sat up and drifted back through the peloton in the final with the next three weeks’ work in mind.

At the line, Alpecin-Fenix’s Belgian sprinter Tim Merlier took his first Grand Tour stage win, with Max getting crowded out in the finale and crossing the line 12th.

For an opening road stage of a Grand Tour, today was pretty good. The roads were wide and well surfaced and there wasn’t too much stress until the final 30km or so.

Afterwards, I did a warm-down on the turbo trainer before boarding the bus for a shower and the transfer to our next hotel. No real glory, but a job well done.

Giro d’Italia

Live, Eurosport 1, 11.15