Jumbo-Visma claim opening team time trial at Vuelta by single second

Jumbo-Visma made a winning start to La Vuelta Femenina, triumphing in the team time trial by one second over Canyon-SRAM in the opening stage of the Spanish stage race.

TORREVIEJA, SPAIN - MAY 01: Marianne Vos of The Netherlands and Team Jumbo-Visma sprints during the 9th La Vuelta Femenina 2023, Stage 1 a 14.5km team time trial in Torrevieja / #UCIWWT / on May 01, 2023 in Torrevieja, Spain. (Photo by Dario Belingheri/Getty Images) Credit: Dario Belingheri/Getty Images

Watch all the best cycling events in the world on SBS On Demand, with the Tour de France, Tour de France Femmes and much more.

The Dutch team set the fastest time at 18’03” over the 14,5-kilometre course with eight teams to go – a performance that proved good enough to keep all of their rivals at bay.

Canyon//SRAM was just one second shy of beating Jumbo-Visma and had to settle with second place, while Trek-Segafredo finished nine seconds behind in 3rd.

British rider Anna Henderson was the first Jumbo-Visma rider to cross the finish line, claiming the red jersey as first GC leader of this event.

"We are over the moon," said Henderson. "This is our first win of the season. We are super happy and super proud of what we did. We did a very good course recon and made a very good plan along with the team's coaches. We believed in each other and this victory is the result.

"Was it planned for me to get the red jersey? I wasn’t even supposed to take part in this race! In the final hundred metres, I rode as fast as I could, I kept going and going, and I found myself in the first position. And now I’m leading the Vuelta, which is awesome!"

Henderson will start Stage 2, a flat road stage between Orihuela and Pilar de la Horadada, in the overall lead, but the nature of the stage may mean that the leader's jersey will pass to team leader and sprinter Marianne Vos by the day's end.

"We didn’t expect to win this TTT," said Vos after the stage. "Of course, we were aiming for the best result we could do, but this is a discipline we don’t do so often, so it’s difficult to really predict a result.

"We could do the recon yesterday and today and we talked a lot about the tactics we wanted to deploy, but in the end you need to pull it off in the moment, which is hard work. Yet in this discipline, you suffer for the whole team, and that makes it a little bit easier.

"It's of course fantastic to start with this victory and we hope to keep this momentum going with the team. There are some flatter stages on which we will be aiming for a stage victory, but we also want to see where we can get as a team in the general classification."

Australian World Tour team Jayco-AlUla finished eighth on the stage, having to recover after losing Georgie Howe to a crash early on the route, although she remounted and finished the stage a minute and 44 seconds slower than the race leaders.

Pre-race favourites Demi Vollering (SD Worx) and Annemiek van Vleuten (Movistar) will be happy enough after the opening stage as they sit 14 seconds and 12 seconds respectively off the race lead at present.