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RACE REPORTS: TOUR OF SPAIN: HTC-COLUMBIA MAKE THEIR POINT
Road Bike Action and AFP
August 29, 2010
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There's a reason the HTC/Columbia team are ranked so high in team respect - they epitomize the very essence of team work. At the opening team time trial in the 2010 Vuelta de Espana, British sprint sensation Mark Cavendish took the leader's jersey on the first day after powering his HTC/Columbia team aboard their Scott Plasma 3 TT bikes to victory in the team time trial here Saturday.
Cavendish said that although he got to wear the Tour of Spain leader's
red jersey, "it belonged to the whole squad. I'm wearing it on behalf of
the team."
"As soon as we did the first training ride on the course on Thursday even after ten minutes on the bike we were riding so well together I had the feeling we were going to win," said Cavendish.
"The team time trial is my favourite discipline because the whole team gets rewarded, it's special that way, and at the same time you need to get it one hundred percent right for it to work."
"I get to stand on the podium quite a lot, but that's because of eight other guys hard work. Today we all got to stand on the podium and I'm incredibly proud of what my team-mates did."
Saturday's victory is the 55th of the 2010 season for HTC-Columbia men's team.
The American team stormed over the 13-kilometre course in the floodlight streets of Seville in 14 minutes and 06 seconds, in a race that broke new ground by beginning at 10pm (2000 GMT).
It was 10 seconds ahead of the Liquigas team that includes Italy's Vincenzo Nibali, one of the favorites for this year's title.
Danish outfit Saxo Bank, which stars Luxembourg's Andy and Frank Schleck and Switzerland's Fabian Cancellara, was third, 12 seconds behind the winners.
Fourth was Italy's Lampre and fifth the American Garmin/Transitions team (RadioShack was not invited to the race).
Cavendish, making his Tour of Spain debut, takes the leader's jersey, which this year is red rather than the traditional gold. Joining him on the podium were the Slovak twins Peter and Martin Velits.
The 25-year-old Isle of Man rider already has a remarkable string of stage wins in major Tours that includes 15 victories in the Tour of France over the past three years.
He will have another chance to show off his skills in Sunday's second stage, which covers a relatively flat 173.7-
kilometre course from Alcala de Guadaira to Marbella and which should favour a group finish.
But the course overall, which includes six summit finishes in eight mountain stages, is expected to favour the climbers.
Many believe the event could be won or lost on the penultimate stage, a 168.8-kilometre course that ends atop the 2,250-metre Bola del Mundo in the Guadarrama mountain rang northwest of Madrid.
The event has been left wide open by the absence of three-time Tour de France winner Spaniard Alberto Contador who skipped his home Tour, which he won in 2008, after a hard-fought victory in France in July, and last year's winner Alejandro Valverde, who is serving a suspension for doping.
Top contenders now include 35-year-old Russian Denis Menchov, a two-time Tour of Spain winner, the Schleck brothers and the 2008 Tour de France winner Carlos Sastre of Spain.
The 21-stage 65th edition of the Tour of Spain, in which 198 riders from 22 teams are competing, ends in Madrid on September 19.
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