Giro d'Italia 2014 - Stage 1
The 2014 grand tour season got underway yesterday with the first stage of the Giro d'Italia. The race got underway with a 21.7 kilometre team time trial around the city of Belfast. Favourites for the day were teams such as Orica-GreenEDGE, BMC Racing Team and Omega Pharma-Quickstep, meaning men such as Michael Matthews or even Cadel Evans could end the day in pink as race leader.
Orica-GreenEDGE went off the ramp second after the Colombia team, and they made the most of the early dry conditions, setting a blistering time of twenty four minutes and fourty two seconds. The rain started to fall not long after GreenEDGE had posted their time, which affected Sky, Movistar and Katusha, the last of which had a particularly poor day in the saddle.
Joaquim Rodriguez's Katusha Team lost over a minute and a half on the day, already putting one of the favourites for victory way behind in the race for the pink jersey. Team Sky recovered wel despite the weather, and ended up coming in just thirty five seconds down. Tinkoff-Saxo were well marshalled and kept Nicolas Roche up in a good position, just twenty three seconds down on GreenEDGE.
BMC, Omega Pharma-Quickstep, and Garmin-Sharp were all later starters along with Astana, but disaster was to strike the Garmin team. Dan Martin, their co-leader, lost control over a manhole cover and hit the ground hard. He also skittled a few teammates, including Koldo Fernandez, who along with Martin abandoned the race with a broken collarbone.
Garmin finished over three minutes down, and despite their best efforts Omega Pharma-Quickstep and BMC Racing Team could only finish second and third respectively. Orica-GreenEDGE were the winners of the stage, their time having stood most of the day, and their Canadian time trial specialist Svein Tuft is the first maglia rosa of this year's Giro d'Italia.