CEBU, Philippines - Four days ago, during the final 15 minutes of stage 1, the Orica-GreenEdge (OGE) team bus was stuck under the finish line banner. Fortunately, with the peloton barreling down the finish, the bus was removed in the nick of time. The team was fined 1,600 Euros and the driver, Gary Atxa, had to apologize even though it wasn’t solely his fault.
Except for that one bright spot during last year’s Milan-San Remo, “busgate†was the microcosm of the team’s fortune- no matter how hard they tried, they just couldn’t cross the line ahead of the others. Well, that all changed during stage 3, when Simon Gerrans, the same guy who shined for the team in MSR, won the furious sprint against Peter Sagan.
Yesterday, the rich just got richer. OGE surprisingly won the 25K team time-trial with a time of 25.56min with an average speed of 57kph! If you think Individual TT’s are difficult, then TTT’s is beyond that. With ITT’s you only think about you and yourself. With TTT’s its about the team. The famous saying in TTT’s is that, “you’re only fast as the slowest rider in the team†couldn’t be truer since the time is based on the 5th rider to cross the line.
Of the teams with yellow jersey aspirations, it was Chris Froome& SKY who came out on top, just losing 3 seconds to OGE. Alberto Contador’s Saxo-Tinkoff also lost just 9sec, which is acceptable. The losers include Ryder Hesjedal’s Garmin-Sharp (+20sec), Alejandro Valverde’sMovistar (+25sec), Cadel Evans’ BMC (+26sec) and Andy Schleck’s Leopard (+29sec).
OGE will most likely keep the yellow jersey until Saturday, when the first mountain skirmish begins. It should make up for the 2 and a-half years of mediocrity for OGE. (FREEMAN)