Columbia-High Road stole the thunder from defending team time trial champion Garmin-Slipstream in the opening stage of the Giro d’Italia on Saturday.

The first team to start, C-HR thundered across the finishing line with its entire nine-man team in tact, setting the blistering time that no other team could beat, at 21minutes 50 seconds for the 12-mile out and back in Lido di Venezia, near Venice.

Mark Cavendish, the best sprinter in the world, crossed the line first and hence picked up the pink jersey as the race leader. With flat stages over the first few days of the race, he is likely to retain the jersey for a while.

Second place went to Garmin, which repeated its successful tactic from last year of burning out riders along the route to set a high pace for the five finishers — the minimum. But on this day, the Garmin effort fell 6 seconds short as David Zabriskie led the team across the line.

Third place went to the Astana team of Lance Armstrong, which shed three riders along the way and finished 13 seconds behind Columbia.

Twas a great effort by the Columbia, which featured three national champion time trialists — Italian Marco Pinotti, Australian Mick Rogers and Swede Thomas Lovkvist.

–30–