Giro d'Italia: Orica-GreenEdge win team time trial

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Orica GreenEdge stormed to victory on the opening stage of this year's Giro d'Italia with an impressive and disciplined ride in the team time trial.

The Australian WorldTour team scorched over the 17.6 kilometre course between San Lorenzo al Mare and Sanremo in a time of 19:26 to put Simon Gerrans into the first maglia rosa of this year's race. Tinkoff-Saxo fell short by 7 seconds, with Astana in third at 13 seconds.

Orica was second fastest at the intermediate time check at 9.9km behind Tinkoff Saxo, but held their nerve and their line to push Fabio Aru and his Astana team off the top of the leader board with Gerrans leading them home.

"I think technically we can be very happy," Gerrans said at the line. "We set a really fast time, and left it all out there.

"It was planned that I would be the first over the line. It's an enormous honour to wear the Maglia Rosa. This team has built a reputation for Team Time Trials, and we have some real specialists here, so this result is a credit to them."

Alberto Contador's Tinkoff Saxo stormed through the intermediate check to briefly lead and threaten Orica's defence of the TTT crown they won at the Giro last year, but the Russian team faltered in the closing stages, even dropping Contador briefly. They lost Italian veteran Ivan Basso in the closing stages and were down to six riders as they raced through the final kilometre of the stage.

They regrouped with Micahel Rogers marshalling the team, and although they consistently lost time in the closing kilometres, they were able to hang on for second place on the stage

For Gerrans, the win marked an incredible turn around in what has been a difficult season for the former Liège-Bastogne-Liège and Milan-San Remo winner.

He broke a collarbone in December and missed the Tour Down Under, a race he has targeted and won in the past. He also crashed in his first race back, Strade Bianche, breaking his elbow, but he was integral to his team's ride today and duly pulled on the pink jersey, not far from where he won Milan-San Remo.

"Hopefully my season starts again today. It's been very hard so far but hopefully there are really good things to come," Gerrans said.

In the battle for the maglia rosa Alberto Contador took an early advantage over some of his closet rivals with Aru six seconds down and Uran's Etixx-QuickStep team finishing fourth and losing twelve seconds to the Spaniard. However, Richie Porte and Team Sky suffered most, finishing ninth on the stage and losing twenty seconds to the Tinkoff Saxo leader.

Expert Analysis: Bobby Julich

For Richie a 20” head start given up to Alberto will be important. Saying that, I don’t think that there are many people out there that love the sport of cycling, who aren’t happy for Simon Gerrans after all he has been through this year.

With the first week set up like it is, and Simon riding well, GreenEdge could possibly hold onto the jersey for a week. I don’t think that many of the other GC teams would complain.

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