Cavendish claims first leader's jersey

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The HTC-Columbia squad scorched around the artificially illuminated 13km course of the opening team time trial at the Vuelta a Espana in Seville to put Mark Cavendish in the race leader’s red jersey and secure the top nine places overall.

HTC-Columbia set a time of 14:06 for the testing course in the dark, with the final team finishing close to midnight local time. Liquigas-Doimo finished 10 seconds slower to take second, with Saxo Bank third at 12 seconds. Despite their recent announcement that the team will fold at the end of the season, Cervelo TestTeam put in a solid performance, finishing fourth, 13 seconds back.

Cavendish said that although he got to wear the Tour of Spain leader's red jersey for being the first to cross the line, "it belonged to the whole squad. I'm wearing it on behalf of the team."

"As soon as we did the first training ride on the course on Thursday even after ten minutes on the bike we were riding so well together I had the feeling we were going to win," he said.

"The team time trial is my favourite discipline because the whole team gets rewarded, it's special that way, and at the same time you need to get it one hundred percent right for it to work. I get to stand on the podium quite a lot, but that's because of eight other guys’ hard work. Today we all got to stand on the podium and I'm incredibly proud of what my teammates did."

“This is the first stage of my first Vuelta and I already have the red jersey but I only represent 10% of the win and each of my teammate deserve to wear the jersey as well. For me, to wear the jersey doesn’t change anything for stage 2 on Sunday because it should be a bunch sprint and we would have controlled the race anyway. It doesn’t take me away from my real goal here, which is to win stages.”

Cavendish is also the leader of the points competition, whilst HTC-Columbia leads the teams classification. The team time trial was HTC-Columbia's 55th victory of the 2010 season.

Liquigas-Doimo take second as others struggle in the dark

Surprisingly both Garmin-Transitions and Team Sky were out of the top five and failed to challenge HTC-Columbia. Garmin finished in sixth place, with five riders that included team leader Christian Vande Velde, but was 17 seconds off the pace and sixth. Team Sky was 14th, 28 seconds slower after deciding to wait for Thomas Löfkvist early on before then leaving him behind.

Liquigas director Mario Scirea was pleased with his team's performance and second place. Sprinter Daniele Bennati is the highest non-HTC-Columbia rider on the standings. He also commented on the scary nature of the opening stage. “We’ve put a strong performance, considering that the guys rode with a bit of fear because of not being used to race at night time."

"We have so many young guys here, they have ridden really well with Roman Kreuziger, Vincenzo Nibali and Daniele Bennati who have been the drivers of the team on the road. Bennati is looking good, so we’ll try and get a stage win in one of the first bunch sprints.”

Omega Pharma-Lotto finished seventh, 17 seconds behind HTC-Columbia. Team leader Philippe Gilbert was surprised at the time gap, but said it won't cloud his efforts to win a stage here. “We’ve had a pretty good time trial. To finish seventh isn’t bad for us but we lose 17 seconds and that’s more than one second per kilometre, it’s a lot," he explained.

"We lost two riders between the seventh and the eighth kilometre. That partly explains the gap. As for myself, I’ll try to take profit of the terrain when it won’t be too long climbs. I’d really like to win a stage even though my priority remains to gear up for the world championship.”

The 22 teams rode a mixture of race strategies as they defied the dark. Some chose to lose riders early after huge efforts on specific parts of the course, while others opted to finish all nine riders together. However it was about bravery and speed going into the dark corners at over 50km/h. HTC-Columbia’s polished lead out skills and fearlessness seemed to make a significant difference.

Cavendish pulled on the red leader’s jersey, with eight of his nine teammates filling the overall classification behind him at the same time. Bennati is ninth at 10 seconds.

Cavendish will wear the leader's jersey during the 173.7km second stage from Alcalá de Guadaíra to Marbella.