Vuelta: Peter Velits is race's first leader after team time trial

Peter Velits of BMC Racing Team is the first leader of the 2015 Vuelta, leading his colleagues across the line at this evening's team time trial stage in Marbella to take the red jersey.

BMC won the 7.4 kilometre stage in a time of 8 minutes 10 seconds, with Tinkoff-Saxo the next quickest team, 1 second back, and Orica-GreenEdge in third place, on the same time.

Tour de France champion Chris Froome's Sky team was 20th out of 22 teams in a time of 9:21.3.

In the days leading up to this year's 70th edition of the race, a number of riders had criticised the inclusion in today's beachfront parcours of a section where the surface was sand.

That led organisers Unipublic to declare yesterday evening that while the stage would be held on the same route, time gaps would be neutralised. And because of that a number of teams, notable Team Sky and Team Cannondale Garmin, took it easy on the beachfront course.