Dan Martin's Cannondale-Garmin going through the motions at the farcical opening team time trial stage of the Vuelta in Marbella.
Nicolas Roche's Team Sky and Dan Martin's Cannondale-Garmin filled two of the last three places in the opening team time trial stage at the Vuelta a Espana in Marbella.
With the organisers having planned a disastrous 7.4km team test that took the riders onto a temporary tow path on the beach, the criticism from the teams in recent days forced the removal of the test from the general classification.
It meant the riders were racing for stage honours only and with the first man over the line in the winning team set to take the leader's red jersey.
That honour fell to Peter Velits of specialists BMC Racing, which won the test by just one hundredth of a second from Tinkoff-Saxo in a time of 8mins 10secs.
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Nicolas Roche, fifth in line, was critical of the TTT course in the days leading up to this evening's opener in Spain.
Roche's Team Sky were 20th of the 22 teams, 1:11 down on the stage but suffering no time loss in the general standings.
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Like Sky, Dan Martin's Cannondale-Garmin also decided there was no point in riding all out with the stage neutralised from a general classification perspective.
They finished 9 seconds and one place behind Sky, with only Europcar going slower than the Irish riders' teams.
Tomorrow's stage into Caminto del Rey after 165km finishes at the top of the cat 3 Alto de la Mesa. The 2.5km ascent has an average gradient of almost nine per cent and sections at 15 per cent.
While Martin's condition is unknown after falling ill during the Tour de France and struggling on to finish, if he has his climbing legs on tomorrow it is a stage that will suit him.
A winning burst from him up the climb would bring not only stage honours by the leader's jersey.
Stage 1: Puerto Banús-Marbella TTT (7.4km)
1 BMC Racing Team 0:08:10
2 Tinkoff-Saxo 0:00:01
3 Orica GreenEdge
4 Team LottoNL-Jumbo 0:00:08
5 Etixx - Quick-Step 0:00:10
6 Trek Factory Racing 0:00:11
7 Lotto-Soudal 0:00:18
8 Caja Rural-Seguros RGA
9 Movistar 0:00:24
10 Cofidis, Solutions Credits 0:00:27
11 IAM Cycling
12 Lampre-Merida
13 Astana 0:00:30
14 MTN - Qhubeka
15 Team Colombia 0:00:33
16 FDJ.fr 0:00:44
17 Katusha 0:00:54
18 AG2R La Mondiale 0:01:00
19 Team Giant-Alpecin 0:01:07
20 Team Sky 0:01:11
21 Cannondale-Garmin Pro Cycling Team 0:01:20
22 Team Europcar 0:02:15
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