Defending champion Primoz Roglic has won the opening stage of the 77th Tour of Spain with his Dutch Jumbo-Visma team.
The team won the 23.3-kilometre team time trial at the home race in Utrecht, the Netherlands, in a time of 24:40 minutes and is the first overall leader of the 2022 Vuelta á España with Dutch rider Robert Gesink.
Second place, 13 seconds behind, went to the British team Ineos Grenadiers led by Olympic champion Richard Carapaz (Ecuador). The third fastest team was the Belgian Quick-Step AlphaVinyl team with Belgium's cycling hope Remco Evenepoel one second behind.
Bora-hansgrohe in seventh place
The German Bora-hansgrohe team led by Australian Giro winner Jai Hindley finished seventh, 41 seconds behind. Jumbo-Visma captain Roglic had finished the Tour of Spain as overall winner three times since 2019.
The second stage leads over 175.1 kilometres from s-Hertogenbosch to Utrecht on Saturday. The third stage in the Netherlands ends on Sunday after 193.2 kilometres with the start and finish in Breda. After the first rest day on Monday, the race will continue on Tuesday on Spanish soil in the Basque Country. The last of the three major national tours will finish in three weeks' time in Spain's capital Madrid.
Copyright 2022, dpa (www.dpa.de). All rights reserved
