Chris Froome (Sky) got his attempt to succeed teammate Bradley Wiggins as the Tour de Romandie winner off to a perfect start with a dominant victory in the opening 7,45km uphill prologue. He beat an already superior Andrew Talansky (Garmin-Sharp) by 6 seconds while Robert Kiserlovski (Radioshack) was an encouraging 3rd 5 seconds further behind.

If anyone had any doubts as to who is the favourite in this year's Tour de Romandie, those doubts may have been put firmly to rest by the Brit's dominant performance in today's opening uphill prologue of the Swiss stage race. No one was even close to pose a serious threat to the Brit who was superior to all of his competitors.

The Brit was the last rider down the ramp and from the start he seemed to find a good rhythm on the difficult course which was uphill all the way and finished atop a category climb. He caught his one-minute man Daniel Moreno (Katusha) with 300m to go and then sprinted all the way to the line to take the win.

The FDJ climber Thibaut Pinot proved just how hard the prologue was by setting the early best time in a discipline which is usually not his specialty. He faced a long wait and even though Stef Clement (Blanco), Tom Danielson (Garmin) and Moreno Moser (Cannondale) all came within a minute of his time, he remained leader for most of the day.

The first to beat Pinot was Rui Costa (Movistar) who was one of the 25 last riders to start his time trial. He took the best time with 0,2 seconds but his lead did not last for long. Moments later Richie Porte (Sky) knocked him down by being 1 second faster on the course.

While riders like Jurgen Van Den Broeck (Lotto), Lieuwe Westra (Vacansoleil), Roman Kreuziger (Saxo-Tinkoff) and Jean-Christophe Peraud (AG2r) all failed to beat the Australian's time Talansky had started his time trial. The American has shown on previous occasions that he is a formidable uphill time triallist and he beat Porte's time by a massive 9 seconds to take the provisional lead.

The course proved to be too tough for world time trial champion Tony Martin (Omega Pharma-Quick Step) who was outside the top 10 and Alejandro Valverde (Movistar) also failed to beat the strong American. Surprisingly, the one to get closest in this phase of the race was Robert Kiserlovski (Radioshack) who showed that he is ready to lead the Radioshack team in the Giro by taking a provisional 2nd.

However, he did not enjoy that position for long as Froome powered across the line less than 2 minutes later as the last rider and he took a further 6 seconds off the time of Talansky. The Brit now enters tomorrow's hard second stage with more than 2000m of climbing with a solid lead over his nearest rivals.

Starting at 16.00 you can follow all the action from tomorrow's stage on CyclingQuotes.com/live.

Result and general classification

1. Chris Froome 13.15

2. Andrew Talansky +0.06

3. Robert kiserlovski +0.13

4. Richie Porte +0.15

5. Rui Costa +0.16

6. Thibaut Pinot +0.17

7. Stef Clement

8. Alejandro Valverde

9. Tom Danielson

10. Wilco Kelderman +0.18