With the spring racing season now behind for another year, the 98th Giro d’Italia kicked off on Saturday with a team time trial featuring 22 teams on course for the opening stage of the first Grand Tour of the season. Team Katusha’s nine riders put up a good effort, finally settling for tenth place behind winners Orica-GreenEdge.

"Today we tried to do our best and our goal in the race was to fight for the best time. The first part of the distance was really good, on the intermediate point we were in only 7 seconds behind Orica, marking the second best time. But in the final we missed some power and lost 27 seconds on the finish. That's cycling. So the Giro has started, our team is ready, and I am sure we will be able to get some nice results here in Italy," said team director Dmitry Konyshev.

At 17,6 km the basically flat course began in San Lorenzo al Mare and finished along the coast in Sanremo under sunny skies and pleasant temperatures. With the only technical part coming in the final drive to the finish line, times were fast throughout the day with Orica-GreenEdge’s winning time of 19.26 producing an average speed of 54.339 km/h. While Astana originally posted the fastest time at 19.39, once Orica came through only Tinkoff-Saxo challenged for the lead at seven seconds off the top time. With the team win, Orica rider Simon Gerrans earns the rights to wear the first maglia rosa in the 21-stage, 3482 km Tour of Italy.

Tomorrow’s stage 2 features a few small rolling sections with one rated-climb coming midway through the route. At 177 km, the road stage begins in Albenga and ends in Genova. It should be one for the sprinters.