Star signing Remco Evenepoel made a winning start to his time at Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe as the German team narrowly pipped Movistar to victory at the Trofeo Ses Salines team time trial on Thursday by four seconds.
Benchmarks were set by the likes of Unibet Rose Rockets, Tudor Pro Cycling and Jayco-AlUla on Thursday, but it was the Spanish team who really impressed with a strong team of time trial specialists, beating the Australian team by 13 seconds.
However, despite appearing to fade in the final kilometres of their effort, the German team – led by the world and Olympic time trial champion Evenepoel – had done enough to set a new best time of 23:55 at an average speed of 59.5kph with only one team remaining.
UAE Team Emirates-XRG battled on over the 23.8km course, but they were already 12 seconds down on Red Bull at the halfway point. Then as the final run into Colònia de Sant Jordi arrived, the clock went red, confirming victory for Evenepoel and Co.
"I felt pretty good, it was not a hard course in terms of the elevation, but a TTT is always pretty tough. I think we had a structured plan and it turned out well, so we have to be happy," said Evenepoel at the finish.
"It's pretty nice to start off the season with a win, and also with the new teammates, it's good for morale. We just went as fast as possible, and winning is winning, so I think we did it perfectly.
"Every parcours is different, so it's hard to say what we could improve or not [for the Tour de France], but I think what we did today was close to perfection for this TTT. Everybody did what they could, what they had to do, and today was close to perfect, so way to go for the Tour."
For Movistar, it was agonising watching the World Champion lead his team to a narrow win ahead of them, but all they could do was accept the superiority and admit that there wasn't much more they could have tried in terms of pacing.
"I mean, it hurts so much, to be honest. I don't know, I thought we had it," said Movistar's Iván Romeo at the finish to Eurosport. "When you are competing against one of the best teams in the world, with the world champion and probably the best time triallist ever, it's never easy, you know.
"This one hurts. I was watching the finish and counting down the seconds. It sucks, honestly, but that's cycling.
"We missed some watts, that's easy, if you lose in cycling, you always miss some watts. But no, I think they were just better to be honest. We did a crazy pacing, one second ahead of Jayco at the intermediate, then we were 15 seconds ahead at the finish line, so I think we paced it well, but they did it better. So well done, and we'll try do better next time."
