It was quite a first weekend of racing at the Giro d’Italia.

Team Slipstream—Chipotle left its mark on Day 1 with a huge win in the 23.6km team time trial to open the 91st Giro d’Italia. What an accomplishment.

Thanks to a wonderful team effort, Christian Vande Velde became the first American since Andy Hampsten won the 1988 Giro to sport the stylish maglia rosa leader’s jersey.

There’s a nice TTT write-up on VeloNews and for those who are interested in receiving the latest Slipstream updates via cell phone, get all the deets about Slipstream’s Twitter service on their website. You can also check out more photos here.

So after all the excitement of the TTT win on Saturday, it was quite a blow to see Dave Zabriskie go down in a tumble during Stage 2 when the peloton slowed to cross some railroad tracks. Talk about the highs and lows of bike racing. One day you can be spraying champagne from the top of a podium and the next day a compression fracture to a vertebra has you down for the count.

I know all two well about compressed vertebrae and it can be pretty painful stuff. Over here at Clif we’re wishing Dave a full and speedy recovery. The Giro’s definitely not going to be the same without him. But Dave gave it his all for the team on Saturday, and the team ended up with leader’s jersey for a day. As always, another nice effort by DZ.

And there are many more days of Giro d’Italia racing to come. Here’s to the guys in argyle! Who knew pink could look so good with orange & blue argyle?