Apart from Daniel Martin who crashed out of the race and teammate Ryder Hesjedal, Joaquim Rodriguez was the big loser among the GC riders in today's Giro d'Italia team time trial. The Spaniard already lost 38 seconds to Nairo Quintana on the first day and the team admit that they had hoped for a completely different start.

The 97th Giro d’Italia began in Northern Ireland on Friday evening with the ever-popular team time trial taking place in Belfast. Twenty-two teams took to the 21,7 km basically flat, somewhat-technical course for the opening stage to kick off the first of the three Grand Tours in the 2014 racing season. 

The stage began in the Titanic Quarter, a revitalized section of urban waterfront where the original Titanic ocean liner was built, and ended in Donegall Square North.

First off the ramp was Colombia who set the original time to beat at 26.05, but was quickly bested by Orica-GreenEdge coming in next with a new best time of 24.42. While weather conditions deteriorated and then turned around again to the good, Orica-GreenEdge kept their position throughout the day and earned the win.

Along with the victory came the first maglia rosa going to Canadian Svein Tuft. Omega Pharma – Quick-Step took second place five seconds back and BMC went into third at 7 seconds.

Team Katusha was fifth to start, rolling down the ramp with Maxim Belkov taking the first turn at the front. Rain started to fall hard right then, making the going difficult for some of the teams racing in the same time frame, with Katusha seeming to suffer more than most, ending up 1.33 off the winning time.

The team time trial didn’t play well for Katusha Team on Friday, but with more than 3400km still to ride, Team director José Azevedo expressed the sentiments of the team:

“This wasn’t what we expected, we lost a lot of time to Cadel Evans and Rigoberto Uran,” he said, referring to other pre-race favorites that posted better times than team rider Joaquim Rodriguez. “Just one minute before our start time it started to rain. If you look at both Movistar and Lotto-Belisol that started near us, they also didn’t do a good time. I think many teams raced with wet roads but a few raced with the roads completely dry.  In the technical parts, this made all the difference.”

Azevedo continued:

“We also had to wait for Gusev when he crashed coming into a corner, so we lost some more seconds there.  Now this is the time we have to work with but the entire race is still in front of us.  We have one goal and motivation and we trust in Joaquim.  This is only the first day and there is so much racing ahead of us.”

The Giro d’Italia stays in Northern Ireland on Saturday with the first road stage. At 219 km the route loops further north in Ireland before coming back to end in Belfast. More rain is predicted overnight and could impact both stages over the weekend.