La Vuelta: Dennis hopes opening stage success first of many

The last time Australian Rohan Dennis donned a Grand Tour leader’s jersey was the 2015 Tour de France. On Saturday, the former ‘Hour Record’ holder once again stood atop a podium as an overall race leader after his nine-rider BMC Racing team won the opening team time trial to kick off the 72nd edition of La Vuelta a España in Nîmes.

“It feels great to wear the red jersey, but it is a little bit of a different feeling to when I won the first yellow jersey of the Tour in 2015. I feel like it is an achievement but today, it was a team effort and every rider won, and I am the only one who gets to wear the jersey.”

The 27-year-old Dennis led his team across the line after covering the 13.7-kilometre TTT in a time of 15 minutes 58 seconds to better Quick-Step Floors by six seconds. 

“Everything went to plan today, and we executed our TTT perfectly,” said Dennis after the stage win. “I think we were still a little bit nervous when Team Sky came in and I thought that we had maybe lost it on the line, but in the end, we came out as the strongest team.”

“It was a hard course. It wasn’t just a straightforward time trial,” he continued. “It was technical at the start, and we had to tactically figure out if it was better to finish at the top of the hill with nine riders or if we drop a few guys. 

“The course tested everything: strength, technique, and speed. You had to be the best in every aspect, and we showed our true power today.”

The win not only places Dennis in the red leader’s jersey, but also teammates Nicolas Roche and Daniel Oss in the mountains and combination jerseys respectively. 

But unlike this year’s Giro d’Italia, where Dennis entered his first Grand Tour as the team’s general classification contender before being forced to abandon on Stage 4 after a nasty crash on the previous stage, the Vuelta is not so much about GC results.

“In terms of the race overall, my goal here is not really the general classification,” he said. “Instead, I want to test myself against some of the GC guys in the mountains, and hopefully, I can come away with a few stages, and this is the first one.”

1. BMC Racing Team, 15:58

2. Quick-Step Floors, +0:06

3. Team Sunweb, +0:06

4. Team Sky, +0:09

5. Orica-Scott, +0:17

For full race results click here.