Hushovd takes Day 2 honours in Tour de France

World champion Thor Hushovd took over the Tour de France yellow jersey from Belgianu00a0Philippe Gilbert as Garmin-Cervelo triumphed for the first time on the second stage yesterday.

Hushovd's Garmin team, one of the favourites for the 23km team time trial, set a winning time of 24min 48sec for the punishing event to beat the BMC team of Australia's Cadel Evans into second place by 4sec.
British outfit Team Sky, who had been poised to put Welshman Geraint Thomas into the race lead, finished third just behind BMC, also at 4 sec.


Thor Hushovd

Hushovd, who had finished third at 6sec behind Gilbert on the opening stage, pulls on the race leader's jersey by virtue of being his team's best-placed rider on Saturday. In the overall standings the Norwegian has the same time as Scottish teammate David Millar, with Evans in third place at 01sec.

Thomas, who had been Sky's highest placed rider on Saturday, is fourth overall at 4sec with Germany's Linus Gerdemann of Leopard-Trek fifth at 10. Thomas kept the white jersey for the race's best-placed rider aged 25 and under.

"It was a big dream of mine to pull on the yellow jersey as world champion, so you can imagine how happy I feel," said Hushovd, who has worn the race's coveted jersey three previous times in his rich career. "It's our first win as a team, but you can't forget that I was part of the Credit Agricole team that won the team time trial in 2001. We trained hard for this event and spoke a lot before it about what we had to do."

Meanwhile, Garmin had been ninth from the 22 teams to set off from Les Essarts, and with a number of big rivals still to finish it was a nervous wait.