Race Report: It wasn’t a classic but BMC were one of the few teams who went flat out in the 2015 Vuelta’s stage 1 team time trial to take the victory and the first leader’s jersey on a neutralized stage that means nothing to the overall. Once we knew that the GC times had been neutralized for the stage it was clear that it was going to be a farce. All the teams in the top 10 took risks on a course that was unusual and technically demanding but not quite the minefield we had been led to believe. LottoNL-Jumbo set the early pace with a time of 8:18 minutes but they were overhauled by Orica-GreenEDGE who put 7 seconds into them. That was looking like the winning time but, the surprise package of the day, Tinkoff-Saxo beat them by less than a second. BMC were the last of the teams that tried to set a good time and then flew along the course to beat the Russian super team by a hundredth of a second to take the stage and the leader’s jersey. RouteWe’re in the luxury Andalucian resort of Puerto Banus for the 7.4km team time trial which will end in Marbella, a resort popular with hedonistic British youths keen to smash up their livers before heading off to university. You could forgive the Vuelta organisers for thinking that their race is the forgotten Grand Tour but thanks to a ridiculous route that takes riders over a variety of different...
View the full article
View the full article
