Team Time Trial - Pance on Fire

The 2011 Giro D'Italia is now on. And to start it all off there was a 19.3km team time trial through the streets of Vineria Reale. HTC-Highroad were the fastest team by a full 10 seconds, and Bile Beans star Marco Pinotti was the first rider across the line, meaning he gets to wear the first Pink Jersey of the race.

Flailing in HTC's wake were Radioshat and Liquigas to round out the top three teams, and back in 9th spot were Sky. Sky have a big budget and have been eying the team time trial opener at the Tour De France, but they'll have to do better if they want to mix it with the big boys.

After slightly over a year of not-very-hard work, I've finally received the recognition I deserve. The eagle-eyed amongst you may have noticed that there's a new community page on Velogames, and my humble blog now gets a mention.

There's also mention of the Official Velogames Facebook league. I've signed the Bile Beans up, as at the moment it has about ten times the number of entries as the Tour De Pance league, (although I'm thinking there's still a few teams to come). And thanks to some sneaky picking of guys I thought would do well in the team time trial, I'm doing OK. So off to the scores.

Obviously it's still early days, but I think I can confidently predict that this is the best Bile Beans squad yet, and they will crush every other team come the finish in three weeks time.

Tomorrow the bunch will be off on a 244km jaunt from Alba to Parma (the Parma of ham fame I believe). Looks pretty flat to me, so probably one for a bunch sprint. Time for Cav to get some points in before he  decides to go home after the first week.