Geraint Thomas got off to a strong start at the Tour de Suisse by taking 10th place in a fast and furious opening prologue.

Thomas put time into most of his general classification rivals by powering around the 5.1km course in five minutes and 49 seconds, and that proved just seven seconds slower than the day’s winner Tom Dumoulin.

Dumoulin (Giant-Alpecin) maintained an average speed of 53.8km/h in Risch-Rotkreuz, and stopped the clock two seconds faster than home favourite Fabian Cancellara (Trek Factory Racing).

Thomas’s performance though, pleased Sports Director Gabriel Rasch, who was in an upbeat mood when we caught up with him after the stage.

He told TeamSky.com: “It was a good start from G. He felt like he had good power and rode a very decent ride. He put time into Jakob Fuglsang, Michal Kwiatkowski, Simon Spilak and Thibaut Pinot, so he should be happy with that.

“The course was a fast one, pretty straightforward with no technical corners. It had forecast rain later in the stage, but luckily for us that didn’t happen and the sun shone all day. The wind changed a bit as the day wore on, but I don’t think it had a significant factor in the result. Dumoulin rode a good race and it was a shame for Cancellara that he got a bit sick coming into it.”

Cameron Meyer (Orica-GreenEdge) had put down a solid early marker at the start of the day, and only Greg van Avermaet (BMC Racing) had bettered it before Matthias Brändle (IAM Cycling) threatened to steal the show with his impressive run.

The Austrian’s time stood for almost two hours before Cancellara beat it, but the Swiss champion only had 12 minutes in the hot seat before Dumoulin romped home for his second win of the season.

Kanstantsin Siutsou was Team Sky’s next best finisher in 30th position, with all eight riders placing within 36 seconds of Dumoulin’s winning time.

Rasch added: “There were no problems for the rest of our guys and they’ll all be good to go tomorrow. That should be a pretty hard stage, especially with a tough climb on the concluding laps, and I’m taking a closer look at it with some of the riders this evening. G’s up for it so we’ll see what we can do.”