Meersman wins Tour de l'Ain prologue

On a day when Omega Pharma-Quickstep took over the lead of the Eneco Tour and won the stage with Zdenek Stybar, it continued that success across the French border when Gianni Meersman led the team to a four-man sweep of the top spots in the prologue of Tour de l'Ain.

Meersman blasted around the 4.6km course in St. Amour to repeat his opening victory of 2013, this time followed closely by teammates Julian Alaphilippe, Pieter Serry and Rigoberto Uran in close succession. Cofidis's Jerome Coppel was the best of the rest.

"I am really happy because this morning I thought about this exact result," Meersman said. "I thought about how I won this stage last year and, why not, I can try to win it again. A time trial is a fight against yourself. It's a question of how deep you want to go."

Meersman was perhaps buoyed by his recent performance in the Tour de Wallonie, where he finished second in four stages before finally taking the stage victory and overall win on the final day.

While last year, Meersman clocked a 5:31 for a 3.3km course, this year the stage was much faster, and it only took 5:22 to complete a course 1300m longer.

"The course was different from last year in that it was not so technical, but the last 500 meters were uphill. I think that section is where I won the race."

The secret to the team's success was a morning reconnaissance of the course, where the team trained for two hours on the time trial bikes and did five laps of the course. Having the top of the leader board stacked with teammates also opens up options for tactics in the coming stages.

"We're here with six strong guys," Meersman said. "Tomorrow we will try to defend my leader's jersey. It won't be easy with six riders instead of eight, but that's the same problem for everybody in the peloton. We'll do our best to figure out how to defend my leadership in the best way possible."

Full Results