The race route traveled all the way down to the boot of the Italian countryside. The opening prologue from Lecce to Apulia time trial stage covering , was broken into ten equal segments, with one rider from each team of ten contesting one part. The team with the lowest total time was declared winner and all of the team's riders go to wear the race leader's "maglia rosa" the following day. The times did not count towards the general classification for the race. When writing about this stage's format 44 years later, rider Renato Laghi commented "Torriani was forever having strange ideas."