GreenEdge's win this afternoon in Tirreno-Adriatico was a calculated effort based on days of training. The new Australian squad came to central Italy early to prepare solely for the team time trial.
The team got its first European win and smashed their nearest rival, RadioShack, by 17 seconds.
"GreenEdge was my favourite the whole day because I knew the training they'd put in," RadioShack's Fabian Cancellara told Cycling Weekly. "We haven't done special training for it, compared to other teams who put in more hours and effort into this race. When I saw how it turned out today it tells me that you need days of practice, not just one or two hours. The details matter."
Garmin-Barracuda finished third at 17 seconds and Sky fourth at 23 seconds.
"We couldn't have done anything to go quicker," Mark Cavendish told Cycling Weekly. "Technically we've done absolutely zero training, we hadn't trained at all together. Our first effort was the warm up, and it went technically smooth, I was quite happy with that."
Cavendish recognised the efforts of the other teams in event.
"That's what you've got to do if you want to win it, but we are not here to just win the team time trial. If you target it, you are going to win it."
GreenEdge targeted it by arriving early on Friday to practice.
"On Saturday, we did endurance training, specific exercise for the start and corners," said GreenEdge's Sebastian Langeveld. "On Sunday, we rode five hours, 150 kilometres on our time trial bikes."
"We put a lot of work into winning this TTT. We rode exactly to schedule, for a brand new team and new bunch of guys, it's rare that happens," Stuart O'Grady told Cycling Weekly. "We came here early, we didn't race Strade Bianche. We didn't come to Tirreno with a GC rider. We really put this at the top of the priority list."
Matt Goss is happy because the team's effort means he takes the race leader's jersey into tomorrow's stage, a likely sprint finish.
"We had to do it the training. I hadn't ridden my time trial bike before Saturday," Goss said. "We needed it to get everything fine-tuned and working well. It's paid off."
Related links
GreenEdge take Tirreno opening team time trial
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