Matthews wins Tour of Slovenia prologue

Orica GreenEdge's Michael Matthews wasted no time getting back to winning form following his crash in last month's Giro d'Italia. The Australian topped Cannondale's Kristijan Koren, a hometown favourite, by five seconds in the 8.8km test. Diego Ulissi (Lampre-Merida) was third, just under 10 seconds behind.

Matthews injured his back in his crash at the Giro, and was not expecting to put in a stage-winning performance in the prologue. The victory and race leader's jersey came as a welcome surprise.

"Judging by how I was feeling in the warm-up, I wasn't too confident in the time trial today," said Matthews. "In the end, I got there and did my best. Despite the feeling I had in the warm-up, it was enough to win. It's nice to come off altitude and take a win straight away. It's a good confidence boost going into the new few stages and the next big goals of the year."

Koren, the top Slovenian of the day, was aiming to break 10 minutes on the course, based on last year's stage winner Svein Tuft's time of 9:55. "In the end I went 11 seconds slower and I was short of first place, but I am in the top three which isn't a bad thing," Koren said to Siol.net.

"In the last half hour I watched black clouds coming and was hoping it wouldn't rain. Thankfully it didn't. I'm not too worried about Matthews for the overall classification. Ulissi is the one who is climbing well. I know the climbs well - I'll just try to stay with the climbers and try to do what I can in the end."

Ulissi himself was pleased with his performance, after weeks of training with coach Michele Bartoli. "I'm happy to see my name so close in the stage classification to the time trial specialists," he said.

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