Cycling: Roulston starts well as Dean crashes in warm up

Hayden Roulston. Photo / Kenny Rodger

Hayden Roulston started the Tour of Spain cycling race in the best possible way but fellow-New Zealander Julian Dean could not have had a worst start following a pre-race crash yesterday.

Roulston was fifth in the Columbia HTC train as he helped his squad power to victory around the artificially illuminated course for the 13km team trial at Sevilla in 14 minutes6 seconds to put team leader Mark Cavendish into the tour leader's red jersey.

Second were Liquigas-Doimo by 10sec while Saxo Bank were third another two seconds behind.

Dean was warming up with Garmin Transitions for the night ride when he rolled over a bike lane 5cm higher than the road, his team sporting director Bingen Fernandez said.

"He didn't see it. It happened one hour before the race during our second lap of warm-up. He has a scratch on his shoulder and bruises on his right elbow and right side.

"After one kilometre of racing, he was off, so we basically rode with one rider less and Julian is a very important guy in our team.

"The team time trial is our speciality. We always want to win it. We were one of the favourites, so we can't say we're happy with sixth place but it's not too bad either."

Cavendish said that although he got to wear the Tour of Spain leader's red jersey for being the first to cross the line, "it belonged to the whole squad. I'm wearing it on behalf of the team.

"I get to stand on the podium quite a lot, but that's because of eight other guys' hard work. Today we all got to stand on the podium and I'm incredibly proud of what my teammates did."

Today's stage is over 173.7km to Marbella.

- NZPA