Giro 2014 Stage 1 TTT Team Garmin Dan Martin CRASH!

Giro 2014 Stage 1 TTT Team Garmin Dan Martin CRASH!

It had seemed April was the cruellest month for Daniel Martin but May held an even more vicious twist. Twelve days after the Irish rider lost victory in the Liège-Bastogne-Liège Classic with a crash on the final corner, his assault on the Giro d'Italia ended on Friday night before it had properly begun, when a pile-up in the team time trial on the streets of Belfast put him out with a broken collarbone. "So sad. Nothing to be done. Professional bike racing is cruel," was the immediate verdict of his team manager, Jonathan Vaughters.

The crash came as his Garmin-Sharp team approached the final technical part of the course; in the slippery conditions caused by intermittent showers one of their number appeared to lose control of his front wheel on a manhole cover. Three more piled into the first faller and each other, sliding and rolling down the tarmac.

Nathan Haas, André Cardoso and Koldo Fernández picked themselves up in dribs and drabs but their team leader, Martin, was left sitting in the left-hand gutter clutching his right arm, a classic symptom of a broken collarbone. The team later said Fernández had suffered the same injury even though he finished.

The four who stayed upright had to slow down considerably to regroup into a pack of five -- the time on the finish line being taken on the fifth man -- waiting for Fabian Wegmann who had not fallen but had been tailed off, and the delay meant that they rode in last, 3min 25sec behind the stage winners, the Australian squad Orica-GreenEdge. It was a multiple whammy, because not only was Martin out and three others injured, but the upshot was a massive time loss for the team's co-leader Ryder Hesjedal, the 2012 winner. "It was a nightmare," said Hesjedal, who was in front of the pile-up. "It was pretty scary because you don't know what's going on."

Orica had started as the overwhelming favourites for this stage, having won the equivalent leg in last year's Tour de France and their Canadian, Svein Tuft, who finished last in the 2013 Tour de France, was permitted to be the first rider across the line in Donegall Square on his 37th birthday. He will wear the first pink leader's jersey of the race for Saturday's 219km stage out of Belfast and back via the Antrim coast road, Bushmills and Ballymena. "They gave me the gift, it was a birthday present," he said. "This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for a guy like me."

With Orica lacking a serious contender for the overall standings, the two favourites who took most from this 22km opening stage were Rigoberto Uran of Colombia and Cadel Evans of Australia, last year's second and third finishers. Only two seconds separated Uran's Omega-Pharma Quickstep and Evans's BMC but both gained time on the two strongest climbers, Nairo Quintana of Colombia and Joaquim Rodríguez of Spain. Quintana's Movistar ended up eighth, 55sec behind Orica, losing 50sec and 48sec to Uran and Evans, while Rodríguez's Katyusha squad dropped a further 28sec in a lowly 19th place. These are relatively small margins given the climbing yet to come but momentum matters, and for the moment it is on the side of Evans and Uran.

This was a deceptively hard test, sufficiently long that it needed to be taken seriously and with a strong breeze blowing from the very beginning, where the riders set off down the start ramp in front of the 126ft-high silver aluminium shard-clad walls of the Titanic centre, with the colossal yellow cranes of the Harland and Wolff shipyard to one side, and the river Lagan to the other. The crowds on the 21.7km course were immense, particularly on the lengthy section out and home down the Newtonards road, and up the short climb to the first time check after 7.9km, outside the Stormont assembly building.

Given the windy conditions, it was no surprise to see teams losing riders as early as the opening few minutes on the climb to Stormont. There were nervous mutterings and glances at the lowering skies throughout the evening, because a sudden downpour would mean that tyre pressures would have to be rapidly lowered. Shortly after the fifth of the 22 teams, Katyusha, set off, the breeze began swirling, the temperature dropped and the heavens opened, making every corner and white line on the road a potential pitfall.

To add to the difficulty, on the sequence of bends between the Ormeau Road and Stranmills Road, the crowds spilling on to the tarmac created a narrow corridor for the riders and made the corners and traffic islands nightmarish to read.

The conditions improved slightly for the later finishers, which worked in favour of Team Sky, who eventually placed fifth, Evans's BMC and Uran's Omega-Pharma Quickstep. For Martin, however, it was game over on day one.