Trek Factory Racing wins Tour of Alberta team time trial

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Trek Factory Racing won the opening stage of the Tour of Alberta with an upset victory over odds-on favourites Orica-GreenEdge in Grande Prairie on Wednesday. They covered the 19.6km course in 22:56, beating the Orica riders by just 0.74 of a second, and finishing eight seconds ahead of third-placed team Katusha.

Orica-GreenEdge's roster looked to be the strongest on paper for the stage, with a team that included Svein Tuft, Luke Durbridge, Jens Mouris, Michael Hepburn, Sam Bewley and Michael Matthews, along with GC rider Adam Yates and support rider Christian Meier.

However, they were not strong enough to overtake the early leaders in the team time trial, Trek Factory Racing, which included Bauke Mollema, Matthew Busche, Marco Coledan, Laurent Didier, Gregory Rast, Hayden Roulston, Jesse Sergent and Kristof Vandewalle.

Mollema was the first to cross the finish line for Trek and will take the first leader's jersey at the Tour of Alberta as the race heads into stage 2's 171km race in the County of Grande Prairie on Thursday. The team finished with five riders, including Roulston, Coledan, Sergent and Busche.

"This was the first TTT win in my life," Mollema said. "It was a big team effort and everyone gave everything he had. It was not planned to lose three guys. The plan was to have eight when we finished, but in the past we have always started too slow."

How it unfolded

The Tour of Alberta kicked off on Wednesday under cooler temperatures and gusty winds, with the much anticipated 19.6km team time trial in the city of Grande Prairie. The course was flat and held along wide, open boulevards, and offered little technical aspects, making it a fast opening stage.

Race organisers only permitted bikes and equipment that were legal for UCI mass-start road races, which meant no time trial bikes, clip-on aero handlebars or aero helmets.

Lupus Racing Team was first to set off on course and finished with the initial benchmark of 23:41. Their time was quickly overhauled by Trek Factory Racing, which crossed the finish line with five riders in a time of 22:56, to take the hot seat.

Team after team raced through the finish line, but none could surpass Trek Factory Racing's time, or even break the 23-minute mark.

Halfway through the stagel, Giant-Alpecin came the close with a time of 23:24, followed by Team Katusha in 23:05.

Continental teams Hincapie Racing and Silber Pro Cycling put forth strong times to finish inside the top 10. Cannondale-Garmin also cruised in with a fast time of 23:28.

Riders from Trek Factory Racing bundled up in toques and blankets in the staging area as they awaited the time of Orica-GreenEdge, the last team on course.

The Australian WorldTour team set the fastest 9km split at 10:25, and it looked as though they would have enough left in the tank to take the win. They desperately pushed on the pedals to get over the final small incline and through the last set of corners but came up short by just 0.74 of a second. 

"We didn't know that we had lost because we were up by so much at the split," Tuft said. "We just kind of assumed that we couldn't lose that much time, but because we had used our real engines early on we didn't have that top speed coming home in the headwind section.

"We've had a lot of close ones in our day, and that's hard to take sometimes."

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