Here are five observations from the opening day of action in the Tirreno-Adriatico in Italy.
1. Mark Cavendish is pretty tidy at team time trials
Mark Cavendish will wear the first maglia azzurra of the race after his Omega Pharma-QuickStep team put in the best effort in a rain-sodden 16.9km team time trial from San Vincenzo to Donoratico.
Tony Martin’s excellence in the time trial discipline is well-documented but the lanky German’s record in team time trials is dwarfed by his diminutive team-mate Mark Cavendish.
This was the fourth time Cavendish had been part of a winning TTT outfit following two scalps for HTC in the Giro and one in the Vuelta.
By contrast, Tony Martin’s only winning turn in the team discipline came in last year’s World Championships TTT, which OPQS won with gusto. Despite the adverse conditions on Thursday, OPQS averaged 52.286kph to see off Movistar and BMC by 11 and 16 seconds respectively.
Although Cavendish powered past Martin on the final straight to cross the line in first place and take the race’s first leader’s jersey, the modest 27-year-old was quick to give credit to the big man when asked by Eurosport what made the difference on a wet, slippery course.
“Two words, one name: Tony Martin. He did the majority but the guys were all incredible. Everyone was quite relaxed and there was no pressure. We finished with five but everyone had a part to play in it,” he said.
“There are no egos on this team – except maybe me – but it was all about getting eight guys from point A to point B as quickly as possible. When a team time trial works out, it’s the best feeling in cycling.”
Cavendish will now switch his attention to what is likely to be a thrilling sprint duel between himself and his former German team-mate Andre Greipel, the two in-form sprinters of the 2013 season.
2. Australians: GreenEdge unspectacular but Evans means business
Orica-GreenEdge completed the same course last year in a winning time of 18:41. This year, rolling down the ramp in second place out of 22 teams, the Australian team came home more than a minute slower in a time of 19:48 to give the field an early indication of just how much slower the wet roads were.
Given their disadvantage of starting so early in the day, GreenEdge performed admirably to take sixth place, 24 seconds behind the winners.
While there will be disappointment in the camp, the riders know all too well that their main focus for this year’s race is winning stages with Matt Goss.
Cadel Evans, on the other hand, emerged from the TTT as the best-placed out of the pre-race favourites after his BMC team took third place.
The gaps are minimal, but already Evans has four seconds on defending champion Vincenzo Nibali (Astana), nine seconds on Chris Froome (Sky), 16 seconds on Alberto Contador (Saxo Bank-Tinkoff) and 28 seconds on Joaquim Rodriguez (Katusha).
In a race usually decided by seconds (Evans’s overall win in 2011 was by 11 seconds over Robert Gesink while last year Nibali won by 14 seconds) such marginal gains can be a huge psychological boost.
After a torrid 2012, evidence suggests that Evans is riding back into some form. He may be 36 years old, but his performances in Oman were encouraging and if the Australian can continue to impress in Italy this week, he’ll be riding back into contention for the Tour de France.
3. Katusha’s burst bubble leaves Rodriguez with uphill struggle
Following recent victories by Joaquim Rodriguez and Luca Paolini, plus a late recall back into the WorldTour, Katusha came tumbling down to earth like a meteorite exploding over the Ural mountains on Thursday.
In last year’s Giro d’Italia TTT in Verona, the Russian team were surprise runners-up, setting up leader Rodriguez for his assault on the maglia rosa. Back on Italian soil, Katusha could only come up with the 13th best time, a huge 44 seconds down on OPQS.
“Honestly we expected a better result,” Rodriguez admitted.
“We had a bad start, not taking the first corners at our best. A couple of times our group broke, and we lost two important riders such as Paolini and Kuchynski.
“Anyway, the most important thing was not to fall during this hard day: we’ll see what we can do during the next stages.”
Rodriguez will now rely on next week’s punchy uphill finishes to regain lost time – and with the race concluding with an individual race against the clock (hardly Purito’s strong point), the Spaniard will have to dominate in the mountains if he wants to be a factor on GC.
4. Schleck’s ongoing woes expose Cancellara isolation
The continued absence of anything remotely resembling acceptable race form from Andy Schleck has highlighted just how much RadioShack-Leopard rely on Fabian Cancellara.
RadioShack could only place 10th at 36 seconds, with Schleck inevitably dropped before the finish line.
There once was a time when the Schleck brothers’ Grand Tour hopes dovetailed wonderfully with the classics and time trial ambitions of Cancellara – but with Frank banned and Andy damaged goods, the RadioShack roster looks rather threadbare.
Granted, there are a couple of young exciting New Zealanders on the team in Busche and Sergent, plus there’s the consistent Tiago Machado and the evergreen Jens Voigt; but on the whole, the squad is in desperate need of an overhaul and it looks like Cancellara will be flying the flag on his own this season.
With exception of ‘Spartacus’, the eight riders appearing at Tirreno-Adriatico are a motley bunch and certainly nothing to write home about. Someone of Cancellara’s calibre deserves better.
5. Garmin-Sharp struggling to stop the rot
Last year Garmin were excellent in the classics before putting in a winning performance in the Giro TTT in Verona, setting up Ryder Hesjedal for his unexpected overall win.
Dave Millar’s stage win in the Tour de France aside, things have since not gone so well for Jonathan Vaughters’ squad – and a team boasting the likes of Thomas Dekker, Tyler Farrar, Ramunas Navardauskas and Daniel Martin should have put in a better performance than the 16th best time, almost a minute in arrears.
Going into the race against the clock, Garmin were still without a win in 2013 and directeur sportif Charly Wegelius spoke of his confidence that his riders would be “in the mix”.
Granted, the team’s best time triallists were not on show, but to lose so much time in a discipline in which Garmin usually excels is cause for concern.
Luckily, across the border in France Andrew Talansky managed to pull one out of the bag in stage three of Paris-Nice, finally ending Garmin’s drought. Now what’s that expression about buses…?
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