Roche & Deignan start strongly in Giro d'Italia but Belfast is cruel to climber Martin

One of the big favourites to take the team time trial that got the Giro d'Italia underway in Belfast this evening, Orica GreenEDGE have come good and blasted to the stage win.

An unforgiving encounter with a sunken manhole cover on the course of this evening's 21.7km team time trial in Belfast may have cruelly taken Dan Martin out of the race with a suspected broken collar bone, but the news was better for Nicolas Roche and Philip Deignan in the Giro d'Italia opener.

Their teams performed better than expected this evening, which is especially good news for Roche in his quest to target the general classification in the three weeks ahead.

On the night it was the Australian outfit Orica GreenEDGE who clocked the quickest time.

They flew around the course in 24:42 and enjoyed the advantage of being second off the starter's ramp and so rode some of the course in dry conditions before rainfall began on what ended up a cold and wet evening in Belfast.

The winner's bested the other pre-race favourites for the event Omega Pharma-Quickstep by some five seconds, with the BMC team of overall contender and former Tour de France champion Cadel Evans in third a further two seconds behind.

Roche's Tinkoff-Saxo was next, some 23 seconds off the pace of the winning time, with Deignan's Team Sky next home to fill 5th place, some 35 seconds off the win.

It was a very good ride for both teams, with Roche's squad not regarded as team time trial specialists and Deignan's Team Sky line-up in this race missing the names from its wider squad needed to make them contenders for the win this evening.

As Canadian Svein Tuft led home the winning team on his 37th birthday, he becomes the first leader of this year's event. He will wear the iconic pink jersey on the second stage tomorrow that again starts and finishes in Belfast and takes the riders up the Antrim coast.

Highest placed of the overall contenders is Rigoberto Uran (Omega Pharma-Quickstep) in 9th place just 5 seconds off the time of six Orica GreenEDGE, none of whom is a threat overall.

BMC's Evans is the other big winner this evening and is only two seconds down on Uran, while Roche's team's 4th place leaves him in good shape in relation to others going for the top five overall.

For example, Roche is now 15 seconds ahead of Michele Scarponi (Astana), 30 seconds up on Ivan Basso (Cannondale), 32 seconds ahead of many people's top favourite for final maglia rosa Nairo Quintana and is a very significant 1:10 ahead of Joaquim Rodriguez of Katusha.

May 9th-June 1st: Giro d'Italia

Stage 1: Team Time Trial, Belfast (21.7km)

1	Orica Greenedge	0:24:42
2	Omega Pharma-QuickStep	0:00:05
3	BMC	0:00:07
4	Tinkoff-Saxo	0:00:23
5	Team Sky	0:00:35
6	Astana	0:00:38
7	Cannondale	0:00:53
8	Movistar Team	0:00:55
9	Giant-Shimano	0:00:56
10	Ag2r-La Mondiale	0:00:58
11	Trek Factory Racing	0:01:00
12	Belkin	0:01:01
13	Neri Sottoli
14	Bardiani-CSF	0:01:07
15	Androni Giocattoli	0:01:14
16	FDJ.fr	0:01:18
17	Lampre-Merida	0:01:20
18	Colombia	0:01:22
19	Katusha	0:01:33
20	Lotto Belisol	0:01:34
21	Europcar	0:01:48
22	Garmin-Sharp	0:03:26