BMC Racing took the Vuelta a Espana's opening team time trial Saturday in Nimes, France, beating world champions Quick-Step Floors by six seconds and placing Rohan Dennis in the first leader's jersey of the race.
Dennis surged forward in the final metres to cross the line first for BMC and take the race lead heading into Sunday's second stage.
"It was a hard course, very technical to start and we really had to tactically figure out if it was better to finish with nine or drop a few beforehand," he said. "It tested everything, it tested strength, technique, speed and handling. I’m not too worried about GC on this year’s Grand Tour. My goals were always Giro for GC, and then Vuelta. I just want to go for some stages and test myself against some of the GC guys. Hopefully I can come away with a couple of stages.”
Dennis now leads five of his teammates in the general classification, with Quick-Step, Team Sunweb and Team Sky riders amassed closely behind. Among the pre-race GC favourites, Chris Froome (Team Sky) is just nine seconds off Dennis' lead, with Vincenzo Nibali (Bahrain-Merida) 31 seconds down, Alberto Contador(Trek-Segafredo) is 35 seconds back, and Fabio Aru (Astana) is 41 seconds adrift.
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How it unfolded
The 13.7km team time trial in Nimes, France, was a winding affair that included little in the way of vertical challenge. Manzana Postobon led off the nine-man teams in the evening stage, but it was Bora-Hansgrohe that flew over the course in 16:19 that set the early mark to beat. Led by Rafal Majka, the team blasted past earlier leader Lotto Soudal by just three seconds.
The mark looked in good standing until Team Sunweb’s 16:04 blasted all the rest out of contention. World Champions Quick-Step Floors quickly took care of that, however, carving a half second off Sunweb’s time to set a new best mark and move to the top of the leader board.
Two-time team time trial world champions BMC Racing proved their mettle in the discipline with the new best time just a few minutes later, crossing the line under 16 minutes in 15:58.
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