BMC stormed to victory in the opening team time trial of Tirreno-Adriatico at Lido di Camaiore, with Daniel Oss leading the team across the line to take the blue jersey of race leader and Tejay van Garderen gaining an early boost in the race for final overall victory.
With four riders from their back-to-back world title winning efforts in the discipline on show on Wednesday – Oss, van Garderen, Taylor Phinney and Manuel Quinziato – BMC were among the favourites for the stage, and they duly scorched around the 22.7-km course at an average of 56.947kph to record the quickest time of the day.
“It’s amazing,” said Oss as he waited to receive the blue jersey. “It was one of the objectives for the team win the first stage because we have an amazing team for the TTT. But we also have some amazing climbers like Tejay for the GC, so this is a good start.”
ADVERTISEMENT
BMC’s time of 23:55 was two seconds faster than the previous best established by a fluid Etixx-QuickStep, where, as ever, Tony Martin had been the principal driver but where others, including Omnium world champion Fernando Gaviria, contributed strongly.
If the presence of the two recent world champions in the team time trial was in line with the formbook, then the surprise of the day came from the FDJ team of Thibaut Pinot, who were the early pace-setters and finished the day in 3rd place, 9 seconds down on BMC.
The French squad were winners of the team time trial at the recent La Méditerranéenne event, and their showing at WorldTour level here was further evidence of the emphasis they have begun placing upon the discipline in recent seasons. They display also leaves Pinot well-positioned to improve on his fourth place overall finish at Tirreno-Adriatico two years ago.
You can read more at Cyclingnews.com
via Cyclingnews Latest Race Results http://ift.tt/1QHHbgf
No comments:
Post a Comment