Since the winner of the 2014 Tirreno-Adriatico has been most likely revealed in a person of Alberto Contador (Tinkoff-Saxo) even before the final seventh stage kicked off, Astana leaders aim to significantly improve their overall standings following the individual time trial.

“Confidence – Hope for a better next race – We know that it’s a positive cycle of success that comes from the first big triumph – once one starts going well then everybody starts to go well right behind him – one after the other,” Tanel Kangert, considered one of the most versatile riders, said after the sixth stage of Tirreno-Adriatico.

It is an important goal for many teams to boost the morale by entering the season with a bang, but apparently it wasn’t the case for Astana as their leaders recorded so far unimpressive, yet constantly improving results throughout first two months of a competition supported by a visibly strong and coherent units of reliable domestiques.

Astana started Tirreno-Adriatico with two appointed leaders: Scarponi and Brajkovic, and even though the latter fell far out of contention, the former has very realistic chances to enter the top ten of overall standings with some possibilities to make it to the top five, as his sits eleventh only one second behind Kiserlovski of Trek Tactory Racing ahead of the final time trial.

The short, 9 kilometers long time trial offers a little hope for creating significant time gaps, but it should prove enough for Scarponi, on a good day, to make it to the top ten as well as for highly skilled in the discipline Estnian Kangert to improve on his 24th spot.