HTC Highroad powers to team time trial victory

The HTC-Highroad women's squad opened the Giro della Toscana Femminile with a victory in the stage 1 team time trial. The team, led in by defending champion Judith Arndt, stopped the clock in 6:27 for the 5.5km parcours to beat the Russian Federation team by 13 seconds and Gauss by 24 seconds.

With the stage victory, Arndt picked up where she left off in 2010 as the holder of the leader's jersey.

"It was a flat circuit today," said HTC Highroad sports director Ronny Lauke, "A very simple course that came down to setting as strong of a pace as we could and maintaining it until the end.

"Our plan was to accelerate hard at the start and keep pace steady. We had Judith [Arndt], Ina [Teutenberg] and Charlotte [Becker] pulling on the long stretches and our younger riders leading out the short sections."

With another flat circuit tomorrow, the HTC-Highroad women face a 117.1km route to defend their lead and keep Arndt in the leader's jersey.

"We have been on a bit of a winning streak over the past ten days and we plan to keep the momentum here in Tuscany," said Lauke.