Orica-GreenEDGE powered to a stage one victory at the Giro d'Italia while Cadel Evans gained an early edge over his biggest rivals on a superb opening day for Australia.
The rising Australian team made the most of an early start and favourable weather conditions to win Friday's 21.7km team time trial through the streets of Belfast.
Orica-GreenEDGE, featuring six Australian riders, allowed Canadian Svein Tuft to cross the line first on his 37th birthday, meaning he claims the event's famed pink leader's jersey, the maglia rosa.
"What an amazing day. I'm so proud of the team and can't thank them enough," Tuft said.
"This team is really selfless in that way and I just feel really fortunate to be given that gift on my birthday."
The Victorian-owned team, who claimed the win in the same discipline at the Tour de France last year, were able to complete most of the course before conditions worsened when a brief storm hit.
They clocked 24 minutes and 42 seconds to finish five seconds ahead of Belgium's Omega Pharma-QuickStep team, featuring general classification contender Rigoberto Uran of Colombia.
Evans's BMC team was next a further two seconds back but some of the Australian's biggest rivals for the general classification copped the brunt of the rain.
Among them were two of the pre-race favourites, Nairo Quintana of Colombia and Joaquim Rodriguez of Spain, whose Movistar and Katusha teams lost 55 seconds and one minute 33 seconds respectively.
"For the overall, I think it's quite promising that we've already made some time gains to some of the favourites," said Evans, who is missing the Tour de France to target the Giro this year.
"We have a lot of big mountains to go and maybe it won't mean much but if you look at it the other way, after only 20km of racing we have these sort of gaps.
"I think we rode well today to get the result we got."
There was high drama as Irishman Dan Martin, a stage winner in last year's Tour de France, crashed heavily and brought down four of his Garmin-Sharp team-mates.
He was taken to hospital with a suspected broken collar-bone, ending his Giro just fifteen minutes after it started.
Orica-GreenEDGE entered the event buoyed by six victories in just eight days and had targeted Friday's opening stage with a team stacked with noted time-triallers.
The second team out, they lost Mitchell Docker early on but Tuft, aided by Australians Luke Durbridge, Brett Lancaster and debutant Michael Hepburn, marshalled the team through.
"I was just talking to Michael Hepburn and he was saying `is this like it always is for a grand tour?'," Tuft said.
"I was like `no, this is a special day'."
Belfast is also the start and finish point for Saturday's 218km second stage.
The event then moves to Ireland before heading to Italy from stage four.
Share
