Australian Rohan Dennis set a new record for the highest average speed in a Tour de France timetrial as he won the opening stage of the 2015 edition.
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The 25-year-old scorched around the 13.8km course in just 14min 56sec despite the Dutch host city of Utrecht being in the grip of a heatwave.
“I’ve broken a dry spell of wins and what a way to do it,” said a delighted Dennis. He was the only rider to dip below the 15-minute mark and set a new Tour record of 55.446kph on average for a timetrial, beating the 21-year-old mark set by Britain’s Chris Boardman over a course that was just over half the length.
More important for Dennis, though, will be his opportunity to wear the yellow jersey in today’s second stage over 166km from Utrecht to Zeeland.
“I left it all out there; I went off harder than what I thought I should have and I came back harder than what I thought I could,” said the BMC rider. Dennis had said before the Tour began that his whole season had been built around training for this timetrial and that should he win, it would be “the happiest day of his life as a cyclist”.
And he did so in style, beating three-time world timetrial champion Tony Martin into second by five seconds with four-time world champion Fabian Cancellara third at six seconds.
Among the overall contenders, reigning champion Vincenzo Nibali surprised his rivals by putting time into Chris Froome, Alberto Contador and Nairo Quintana. The first marker was set by 2010 Dutch timetrial champion Jos van Emden, the ninth rider to start, who finished in 15min 11sec. But less than half an hour later, that was bettered by Dennis, even though Van Emden’s time of 7min 27sec at the 7.1km time check would remain unbeaten all day.
Dennis was only one second behind but finished stronger and then had to wait for almost two hours before the true challengers to his time started to roll over the line.
By now there were very few riders left expected to push for the stage victory and even Spartacus, Cancellara, a five-time winner of opening stage timetrials or prologues at the Tour, could not unseat Dennis.
Like Dumoulin he was a second behind Dennis at halfway but like everyone else he couldn’t match Dennis’s pace over the second half of the race. Italian Nibali caused a stir by beating the man he deposed as Tour winner, a seemingly out-of-sorts Froome, by 7sec.
Nibali finished 22nd in 15min 39sec while the other two members of the ‘fantastic four’ lost even more time than Froome, who was 39th. Giro d’Italia winner Contador was 15sec behind the Italian while Quintana lost 18sec.
