The race in its third year, started with a 19.6km time trial in the city of Grande Prairie on a basically flat course.
That was soon beaten by Trek Factory Racing who got their team which included Bauke Mollema, Matthew Busche, Marco Coledan, Laurent Didier, Gregory Rast, Hayden Roulston, Jesse Sergent and Kristof Vandewalle over the line in a time of 22.56.No-one got near that time as the other teams started to finish until Orica Green Edge were on the road.
The Australians were fastest at the check point but finished an agonisingly 0.74 seconds behind to give Trek the victory.
"It was a little unexpected because we saw that Orica-GreenEdge had the fastest spit by 12 seconds and we didn’t think it would be so close at the end,” said Trek Factory's director Kim Andersen. “I knew that we had a good chance to win so I really tried to motivate the guys before the start. I think it also helped that we were third team to start because we could warm-up on the course, we did a full lap full gas and didn’t even have to use rollers.”
“This was the first TTT win in my life, “said Bauke Mollema, who will wear the yellow jersey for Thursday’ssecond stage. “It was a big team effort and everyone gave everything he had.
Source: DSG
