Manuel Quinziato (BMC) confirmed his improved time trialling skills by winning his first title at the Italian Time Trial Championships. The Italian beat Manuele Boaro (Tinkoff) into second while Moreno Moser (Cannondale) had to settle for third.

In the early part of his career, Manuel Quinziato was known as one of the best Italian time triallists. In 2003, he was close to a maiden Italian TT title as he finished second behind Gianpaolo Mondini and he came away with bronze in both 2006 and 2007.

Since then, Quinziato’s skills in the race against the clock have been on a downwards trend and until today, he hadn’t been on the podium at his national championships since his last bronze medal in 2007. Since 2014, however, he has clearly improved a lot and has been close to victory on several occasions in big international races.

Today he confirmed his return to form by finally claiming that elusive national champion’s jersey. On the 41.3.km course in Romanengo, he beat Manuele Boaro into second and Moreno Moser into third.

Quinziato’s win broke the run of titles for Adriano Malori who took the victory in both 2014 and 2015. However, he is still recovering from his crash at the Tour de San Luis and so he was absent from today’s race. Instead, Boaro emerged as the biggest threat for Quinziato but the Tinkoff rider again had to settle for second like he did in 2011. For Moser, it was the second consecutive podium as he was third behind Malori in last year’s race.

The riders will now turn their attention to Saturday’s road race where Vincenzo Nibali’s title will be up for grabs on an easier course than those that has been used in recent years.