Stage 1
Tuft in pink at 37
- Friday 9 May 2014
- 21.4 km
- 115 m climbed
- Won by Svein Tuft
The road
At the start
The Giro starts in Belfast
The Giro begins where the Titanic was built: 21.4 kilometres of team time trial out to the Stormont estate and back into the city. Nobody holds a second over anybody yet. Orica-GreenEdge, built on Australia's team pursuit squad, are everyone's pick, while BMC want to land the first blow on Nairo Quintana for Cadel Evans. Showers drift across the course, so the running order may count as much as the horsepower.
How it was won
- 9 km to go
A manhole cover in the rain
A shower sweeps across Belfast and the team time trial becomes a lottery. Five Garmin-Sharp riders go down together on a slick steel manhole cover, and Dan Martin gets up with a broken collarbone: the Irishman's home Giro is over on its first afternoon.
- At the line
Tuft in pink at 37
Orica-GreenEdge stop the clock in 24:42, five seconds clear of Urán's men and seven up on Evans and BMC. Svein Tuft is sent across the line first by his team, and the Canadian takes the first maglia rosa of the Giro on his 37th birthday.
The result
| Rank | Rider | Team | Time |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Svein Tuft | Orica GreenEDGE | 24:42 |
| 2 | Luke Durbridge | Orica GreenEDGE | +0:00 |
| 3 | Pieter Weening | Orica GreenEDGE | +0:00 |
The route on real terrain, every moment pinned to the kilometre it happened on — and the GPX to ride it yourself.