For Spanish climber Sergio Pardilla (MTN-Qhubeka), the Tour de Suisse is one of the most important races of the year. Today he got the race off to a surprisingly strong start when he finished 12th in the time trial.

Tony Martin (Omega Pharma Quickstep) won the opening 9.4km time trial at the Tour de Suisse. The World Time Trial Champion blitz the course in a time of 13’48″, which was 6″ faster than Tom Dumoulin (Giant Shimano) and 13″ quicker than Rohan Dennis (Garmin Sharp). Team MTN-Qhubeka p/b Samsung had Sergio Pardilla finish in 12th place, 31″ behind the German victor.

This was a mightily impressive performance for the slightly built Spainard as he was up against all the real heavyweights of Time Trialing in the world. Daniel Teklehaimanot and Jacques Janse van Rensburg both put in decent performances too as they were both within a minute of Martin’s winning time.

"Today was an important stage because if I did well it would do the morale very good," Pardilla said. "Physically I feel very good and very motivated for this race. I have put in some really hard work over the last 4 weeks, thinking about this race."

"We can be satisfied with our first day of the 4th biggest stage race in the world," Directeur Sportif Jens Zemke said. "Apart from Sergio’s incredible ride the team finished as the 13th team. Nobody could expect that and the guys showed strong will. If we can compete with the best in a time trial we should also be able to continue our strong performance through the week."