Current Olympic Champion take the lead in stage one of the NZCT Women’s Tour of New Zealand
Photos: Mark Gunter
The current Olympic Time Trial Champion is in the yellow leader's jersey after powering home to win the opening stage time trial of the NZCT Women's Tour of New Zealand today.
Kristin Armstrong won the 7km race in a time of 10m15s, 17sec ahead of her USA teammate Evelyn Stevens and the same time ahead of current World Time Trial Champion Judith Arndt (GreenEdge).
As the second to last and last riders to tackle the course around Massey University, Armstrong, herself a two time World Time Trial Champion, and Arndt enjoyed much better weather conditions than the almost torrential rain Stevens endured when she set the early pace race earlier in the evening.
They still had to contend with the wet roads through but, like the rest of the peloton, they took their lines well and stayed upright around the technical circuit which included a difficult off-camber corner.
The hardy local supporters who were brave enough to face the wet weather saw some of the top riders in the world in action - amongst them NZ's Linda Villumsen.
Racing for Australian team GreenEdge, the silver Commonwealth Games medallist finished 4th, a ride all the more impressive as it was her first race of the 2012 season.
Today was the first of five day's of what will no doubt be great racing in the Manawatu, and Armstrong is keen to keep the leader's jersey until the finish line on Sunday.
It is what she did back in 2008 before she went on to win the Beijing Olympics, and with the London Olympics as her reason for coming out of retirement, it is a formula the American is keen to repeat.
"There's luck on everyone's side and I wish everyone the very best of luck and I'll be giving it everything I have," she said at the team presentation prior the the race.
Everything she had was enough to take the win today at least, but there are many kilometres still to ride, as she acknowledged on the podium.
"We have a lot of work cut out for us, there are a lot of great teams here and we have GreenEdge behind us in 3rd and 4th. There are four days left to go and we have our work cut for us."
Tomorrow the peloton faces a 137 km loop through Ashurst, starting and finishing in Palmerston North.
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