La Méditerranéenne stage 1 TTT

Today saw a miserably cold, wet afternoon as 16 teams rounded the usually scenic lake at Banyoles to complete a 5.5km team time trial in the opening stage of La Mediterraneenne. Having ridden the 20km from Girona to Banyoles, my fingers were sufficiently numb for much of the afternoon, so I hope you’ll excuse me for missing any decent photos of a couple of the teams–oops.

The first team to take to the start ramp was Armee De Terre.

Euskadi Basque Country.

Team Vorarlberg.

Veranclassic-AGO.

Rally Cycling. The American squad finished the course in 8th place and on the same time as AG2R.

Danny Pate.

Roubaix Lille Metropole.

HP BTP-Auber 93.

Bardiani.

Androni Gicattoli-Sidermec.

Delko Marseille Provence KTM.

Fortuneo-Vital Concept. Below: Pierrick Fedrigo warming up.

Cofidis.

Direct Energie would finish in third place overall.

Antoine Duchesne.

Astana. With just 6 riders, Astana set the fastest time of 6:00.

FDJ, fielding a full squad of 8, beat Astana to take the stage by half a second, officially with the same time of 6:00. Below: Arnaud Démare.

AG2R. Below: Jan Bakelants.

It was a wonderful surprise to hear the familiar voice of Daniel Mangeas at the finish line. He’s retired from announcing the Tour de France but is still calling races.

FDJ celebrated their team victory.

Matthieu Ladagnous received the first yellow jersey of the 4 day race.

Andrei Grivko in the green jersey.

Marc Sarreau, the best young rider.

From here, the race will cross France in 2 stages and finish up in Italy. I won’t be following it the rest of the way but I do expect to get to a couple more races this month!