It was a good day for Nicolas Roche, with his Tinkoff-Saxo seen here on their way to 4th on today's Tirreno-Adriatico opening team time trial.
By Gerard Cromwell
Mark Cavendish donned the first blue jersey of race leader at Tirreno-Adriatico today after he led his Omega Pharma Quickstep squad to victory over arch rivals Orica GreenEdge in the opening team trial in San Vincenzo.
Nicolas Roche, Dan Martin and Sam Bennett were all in action in the week-long Italian stage race, with Roche’s squad faring best of the three teams containing Irish riders.
Tinkoff-Saxo posted a time 24 seconds slower than Omega Pharma Quickstep, good enough for fourth place on the day. They were happy enough with a ride that saw Alberto Contador snatch an early three second advantage over Sky’s pre-race favourite Richie Porte.
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“Omega-Pharma and Orica are specialists in this discipline and we finished ahead of our main opponent here, Richie Porte,” said Tinkoff Saxo team manager Philippe Maduit afterwards.
“I think we’ve created a solid position before entering the mountains.”
Although Bennett’s NetApp team were without strong time triallists such as Jan Barta and team leader Leopold Koenig, they put in a solid effort to finish 14th, 53 seconds down on the winners.
"I think we were strong enough to get a much better result but our technique let us down,” said Bennett after his first ever stage of a WorldTour race.
“We made some little mistakes that added up to big time differences at the end, but I felt really good today."
Having taken his first professional victory at the Clasica de Almeria last Sunday week, Bennett will relish the thoughts of sprinting against race leader Cavendish in tomorrow’s second stage finale.
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"It will come down to a sprint, and we'll try to get Sam in good position for it,” said NetApp Endura directeur sportif Enrico Poitschke today.
“Of course, there's no pressure at all on us with the world's best sprinters competing here. We're totally realistic about that and will simply do our best and see how it works out in the end."
Dan Martin’s season debut didn’t exactly go to plan however, as mechanical issues saw the usually super slick Garmin Sharp squad forced to settle for a disappointing 18th place, recording a time one minute and four seconds slower than the stage winners.
Cavendish now leads the race from in-form teammate Michal Kwiatkowski, winner of the Tour of Algarve and Strade Bianche already this year.
"It's good to start off with a win," said Cavendish afterwards.
"You have to get everything perfect to win a team time trial, so it's always more rewarding when you pull it off and you get to stand on the podium together. It's going to build our morale.
"We want to do well in the sprints, we want to do well in the mountains stages and we want to do well in the GC too. We're ready. We'll cover all our bases and see what happens."
Mark Cavendish, a sprinter Ireland's Sam Bennett will hope to challenge in coming days, takes the first leader's blue jersey of the race.
