Phinney edges out Thomas in Giro

Taylor Phinney knocked Team Sky's Geraint Thomas into second place as he won the time trial which opened the Giro d'Italia.

Lithuanian Ramunas Navardauskas (Garmin-Barracuda), one of the first men down the ramp in the season's first Grand Tour, had set the target time of 10 minutes and 48 seconds over the 8.7 kilometres route around the Danish city of Herning.

That stood for much of the afternoon until Manuele Boaro (Saxo Bank) knocked seven seconds off it to move to the top of the standings.

But while he was still conducting his TV interview, Welshman Thomas had roared around the course to cross the line six seconds ahead of him in 10:35.

Thomas, who has spent much of the season on the track and was part of the Team GB team pursuit squad which smashed the world record in winning gold at the recent World Championships in Australia, set a fastest intermediate time of 5:14 after 4.5km which was to stand for the rest of the day.

And despite making the transition from 4km efforts on the boards, he kept up the momentum in the second part of a technical course featuring 17 corners to surge into the lead.

However he too was only afforded a brief stay at the head of affairs as US star Phinney, a former U23 world time trial champion who set off four minutes after him, produced a power-packed display on the long drag to the line to stop the clock in 10:26.

No one else was able to get close to that, though Dane Alex Rasmussen (Garmin-Barracuda) was later to claim third place, with Phinney's outstanding performance putting nine seconds and more into the rest of the field as he was the only man to average over 50km/h.

His victory means he's the first rider in the race leader's maglia rosa and his team will now look to protect that jersey in Sunday's second stage which covers 206km around Herning.

Last man down the ramp and wearing the pink jersey which he inherited for victory in last year's edition, Michele Scarponi (Lampre-ISD) struggled out on course, dropping time to general classification rivals Ivan Basso (Liquigas-Cannondale) and Joaquin Rodriguez (Katusha).