Going into the Tour of Alberta, Belkin had made it clear that they will target stage wins in the 6-day race. After the opening prologue, the team seems to be out of the GC battle.

The Belkin Pro Cycling TEAM began the six-day 2014 Tour of Alberta, Canada, on Tuesday with a low-key approach to the race’s opening prologue time trial. Dutchman Steven Kruijswijk led the team with 23rd place, 31 seconds behind the dominant winner and initial race leader, Tom Dumoulin of Giant-Shimano.

Belkin’s Frenchman Jonathan Hivert and Australian David Tanner were 25th and 26th, respectively, at :33.

The prologue course in western Calgary, just 4 kilometers long, was very technical, including a tight turnaround midway and a steep, twisty climb to the finish line in Canada Olympic Park, home to the Canadian bobsled, luge, ski jumping and freestyle skiing team since the city hosted the 1988 Winter Olympic Games.
 

“It was an OK start for us, nothing special,” said Belkin Sports Director Michiel Elijzen. “We will focus on stage wins, in sprint stages with Theo Bos. The rest of the stages we won’t be riding with a leader, but we’ll try to be aggressive.”

Belkin joins four other, eight-man UCI World Tour teams – Garmin-Sharp, Cannondale, Orica-GreenEdge and Team Giant-Shimano – at this race categorized 2.1 by the UCI. The rest of the peloton is comprised of Continental and domestic Canadian and American teams.

The 2014 Tour of Alberta resumes Wednesday with the race’s 143km first stage: six laps of a relatively hilly, 23.8km circuit in the town of Lethbridge, near the U.S. border. Perhaps Kruijswijk, fresh off overall victory at the Arctic Race of Norway last month, can have a go, as well.

“We’re are looking forward to some crosswinds. Good for us, I think, because we’re used to that in Holland,” Bos explained. “And our French and Aussie teammates are specialists at that, too.”

“Tomorrow’s stage could be a difficult one,” added Elijzen. “Riding laps is especially hard, but there is a tough section every time that could be nice for one of our riders.”

The 2014 Tour of Alberta, ends Sunday in Edmonton.