Like two years ago, Movistar wins TTT and Jonathan Castroviejo takes the first red jersey.
Like two years ago in Pamplona, Movistar won the inaugural team time trial of the Vuelta. For more than an hour, Cannondale proved most of the predictions wrong as they held the best time and eventually finished second, which could lead Peter Sagan to take the red jersey through time bonus on stage 2. But for now, Jonathan Castroviejo leads the race, just like two years ago. Nairo Quintana and Alejandro Valverde have taken a significant advantage over other GC favorites: 19 seconds to Alberto Contador, 27 seconds to Chris Froome, 38 seconds to Joaquim Rodriguez. Most of them made their priority to avoid crashing and nobody did.
Jonathan Castroviejo (Movistar, leader of the Vuelta): “I thank all my team-mates to have allowed me to cross the line first. They all would have deserved it as much as I do. I’m particularly happy because I became a father last week and this is a very nice gift from my team. Everything went according to the plan. Firstly, we had to avoid crashing, secondly we had to respect the orders set by our directeurs sportifs for swapping turns. This victory is just as great as it was two years ago in Pamplona. I was already lucky enough to wear the red jersey. I don’t think I’ll be able to keep it for long. Sprinters like Peter Sagan and John Degenkolb are just a few seconds down. They’ll go for time bonus. This is a wonderful day for me but I’ll soon be back at work at the service of Nairo Quintana.”
Chris Froome (Sky): “I’ve got to admit that we were all hoping for a better result. But a difference of thirty seconds is not much. There are 21 days of racing. I’ll try to make up time wherever I can. Any opportunity, you take it. On a course like that, you give everything regardless of what’s coming up next. It suited teams with riders able to accelerate after every corner. We’ve had a few radio problems. It didn’t help our communication. Movistar has been impressive today, so was Tinkoff-Saxo.”
Alessandro De Marchi (Cannondale): “It’s been a nice experience to hope for the win for so much time but at the end we’re second. Damiano Caruso was our first man on the line. It’s a good performance anyway. Had we been told this morning that we’d be second, we wouldn’t have believed that. We were not expected to go so well. We read the course very well and we remained united.”
Shayne Bannan, team manager of Orica-GreenEdge: “We’re really happy with how it went. The guys handled the roundabouts very well. To keep the
guys together, a lot of chasing was needed. We’ve delivered a consistent performance. Our strongest guys were Lancaster, Bewley, Cam Meyer, Matthews. Chaves was good too! He didn’t drop the pace.”
Rik van Slycke, DS of Omega Pharma-Quick Step: “We always want to win but we don’t always win. We’re not really disappointed today because we managed to stick to the plan and we couldn’t do more than the maximum. The best team has won. We weren’t the best today. We had specialists of high speed and it was difficult to handle a high speed on this very technical course.”
Rohan Dennis (BMC): “It was not a horsepower kind of thing. This race was for lead out men, not for climbers. That’s why Cannondale did so well. We’re fine with our performance.”
Jens Zemke, DS of MTN-Qhubeka: “We can be super happy with the result today, considering where we’re coming from. This project has existed for a couple of years but with this Vuelta, we’re bringing a new continent at the highest level of cycling. We’ve tried to prepare the race very well. The whole team was strong today. Three guys (Louis Meintjes, Jaco Venter and Jay Thompson) got dropped but after doing an excellent work. We’re absolutely satisfied with our performance. We’ve got super young guys and six of them have never done a Grand Tour before.”