Tirreno-Adriatico: BMC Racing wins team time trial

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BMC Racing won the opening team time trial at Tirreno-Adriatico in Lido di Camaiore on Wednesday, clocking a time of 22:19 over the 21.5km course and beating Mitchelton-Scott by four seconds and Team Sky by nine seconds.

Damiano Caruso was the first to cross the line for his BMC Racing team and will wear the first leader's jersey of the seven-day race. He leads the race ahead of teammates Rohan Dennis, Patrick Bevin and Greg Van Avermaet.

Caruso now officially assumes the leadership role at BMC, who are without their main general classification contender Richie Porte. The Australian was forced to skip the race due to illness. Caruso knows it will be an uphill battle to defend the race lead.

"Without Richie it is more difficult for us. We take it easy day by day and we see what will happen," he said. When asked if he would be the team's GC leader, Caruso said he did not know. "We have Greg Van Avermaet with us for the stages. I want to try and fight for the GC, but [we will take it] day by day."

How it unfolded

The opening team time trial set the stage for the seven-day race with a completely flat parcours. The teams raced along coastal roads before making the turn-around at Forte dei Marmi and crossing the intermediate time check at 10.7km on the way back to Lido di Camaiore.

Teams set off the starting ramp in five-minute intervals beginning with Mikel Landa's Movistar squad. The team was third last year but couldn't manage to pull off a top-10 this time around, finishing further down in 12th place.

Team Sky followed in hopes of a better performance than last year where they finished 18th after two riders suffered from wheel failures. And in almost a reversal of last year, compared to Movistar, they passed the time check at 11:19, already 18 seconds faster than the Spanish outfit. They ended up in third place on the day, setting up their team leader Chris Froome ahead of the mountain stages.

Dimension Data suffered a major blow on the return stretch to Lido di Camaiore when Mark Cavendish hit a pothole and crashed. He sustained lacerations to his face and road rash on his right arm and leg. He got back on his bike and finished the stage, but was later taken to the hospital. The full extent of his injuries is not known, but despite finishing, he missed the time cut and will not be able to start the stage. It was his first race back after suffering a concussion in a crash at the Abu Dhabi Tour, and he was hoping to do well in the sprints this week.

Mitchelton-Scott, with a powerful team that included time trial specialists Jack Bauer, Luke Durbridge and Michael Hepburn was marked as one of the favourite teams. Although they rode third fastest at the intermediate checkpoint, they upped the speed on the way back and finished, with only five riders, to set a new benchmark for the fastest time of 22:23.

Mitchelton-Scott's time didn't hold as BMC came storming through four seconds faster with the winning time. The American outfit has won the opening team time trial in the previous two editions but wasn't necessarily marked as the outright favourites for the stage this year, missing GC man Richie Porte who is out with an illness.

Crossing the line first, Italy's Caruso has the honour of wearing the leader's jersey on home soil. "This is my favourite race because we are in Italy and that is always a pleasure to race here," Caruso said.

"I think [the wind] was hard for every team. We just kept pushing until the finish a bloc, and we are happy. I don't know if it was less windy in the final. For sure, it was a strong ride by team BMC."

Last off the starting ramp were team time trial world champions Sunweb. The squad lined up with individual time trial world champion Tom Dumoulin, however, the Dutchman said he was feeling ill ahead of the race. The team rolled through the finish with the fifth fastest time, losing 25 seconds to the BMC.

The race continues on Thursday with stage 2's 167km race from Camaiore to Follonica.

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