Fabian Cancellara answers questions from the press(Image credit: Fotoreporter Sirotti)
Fabian Cancellara sits down at the Trek press conference(Image credit: Fotoreporter Sirotti)
Fabian Cancellara (Saxo Bank) gets the yellow jersey and the cheers from the huge crowds in Rotterdam (Image credit: Fotoreporter Sirotti)
Tony Martin and local favourite Tom Dumoulin may be the men most widely-tipped to don the first yellow jersey in Utrecht on Saturday afternoon, but they will both be keenly aware that it is now fully a decade since Fabian Cancellara (Trek Factory Racing) suffered his last – and to date only – defeat in an opening day time trial at the Tour de France.
That statistic is mitigated in part by the fact that the Tour has, under Christian Prudhomme’s stewardship, increasingly dispensed with a prologue, yet Cancellara’s record remains an impressive one. Stretching back to his debut victory in Liège in 2004, he has won five of the six opening time trials he has ridden at the Tour. The lone off-note, incidentally, was a seventh place finish in the longer, 19km test to Noirmoutier-en-l'Ile at the 2005 Tour.
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Barry Ryan was Head of Features at Cyclingnews. He has covered professional cycling since 2010, reporting from the Tour de France, Giro d’Italia and events from Argentina to Japan. His writing has appeared in The Independent, Procycling and Cycling Plus. He is the author of The Ascent: Sean Kelly, Stephen Roche and the Rise of Irish Cycling’s Golden Generation, published by Gill Books.
