Teniel Campbell, Kristen Faulkner, Alexandra Manly, Ruby Roseman-Gannon, Ane Santesteban and Georgia Williams worked well together to fly around the 19.9km parcours in Marina de Cudeyo in a time of 23’37”.
It was an effort that put them in provisional first, and they survived most of the challenges from other teams before eventually being surpassed by Trek-Segafredo as the American team finished ahead by just six seconds.
The result sets the Australian team up well for tomorrow’s Queen stage, a 105.9km course that packs in five categorised climbs, two of those being category one and a final category two climb that averages over 8 per cent.
Kristen Faulkner will likely be the team’s main player on the climbs, extolling the efforts that the team went to in the team time trial.
“I was really surprised by how great it felt today,” said Faulkner. “We hadn’t actually ridden all together in a TTT, so it was amazing and quite impressive how smooth the entire race went.
“We knew we had a headwind going out and a tailwind coming back, so we tried to take some shorter pulls going out and then really push it on the way back. I think we executed the team strategy really well, and we ended up second overall.
“We’re always going for the win, but it was close and I think we showed the strength we have, and now we can play a little bit defensively in the next few days and put the pressure on the other teams to chase any attacks.”
The Challenge by La Vuelta continues with Stage 2, a mountainous course starting and finishing in Colindres that takes in five categorised climbs over the 106km of racing. Watch Live and Free on SBS On Demand from 2.20am AEST or catch up via the replay and winning moment the next day on SBS On Demand.
