Fiona Mangan (Soltec Team) has opened her debut appearance in La Vuelta Femenina by Carrefour.es with a TTT ride in Torrevieja, a major juncture in her career as she competes in one of cycling's Grand Tours for women.
The 14.5km TTT - the first of seven stages in a revamped race with the strongest teams in the world this year - was won by Jumbo Visma. They clocked a time of 18:03, making for an average speed of 48.199km per hour. Anna Henderson crossed the line first for the Dutch team and, as such, the Briton goes in the first maillot roja of this year's race.
Canyon-SRAM Racing placed 2nd on the stage, at just one second, with Trek-Segafredo completing the podium, some nine seconds down on the winners' time.
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Mangan, a 26-year-old from Co Limerick, and her team mates placed 22nd, some 2:36 down. While they were well off the pace, the Spanish Continental team is one of the smaller squads in the race. They are not overly focused on the general classification and today's stage was all about getting their effort started with an incident-free ride.
Mangan and her team mates will look to contribute to animating the race by infiltrating some of the breakaways in coming days. Tomorrow's and Wednesday's stages 2 and 3 look like ideal opportunities to try and make some moves up the road.
Tomorrow the riders face a 105.8km stage 2 from Orihuela to Pilar de la Horadada before stage 3 on Wednesday; a 157.8km stage from Elche de la Sierra to La Roda. Both stages feature some climbing but they will be raced on terrain that is flatter compared to the more significant mountains later in the week.
