Good spirits at Gerolsteiner

'Mission accomplished' for Team Gerolsteiner in stage one of the Deutschland Tour today: "The guys carried out what we had planned," said team director Hans-Michael Holczer. "We wanted to make life hard for the sprinters in the finale - and that's what we did. Everybody's in great shape, so the next few days will be exciting."

Even though the men from the mineral water team could not prevent a bunch sprint finish, two attacks put their mark on the final racing kilometres to Bielefeld. First, it was Stefan Schumacher who tried to get away on a small climb. "The short ascent with seven kilometres to go was unfortunately too short to make a difference," he said. "But it was worth a try!"

Next up it was Sebastian Lang's turn to attack, just as his teammate Schumacher was getting caught two kilometres before the line. "There was gap when I jumped, so if the sprinter's teams would have looked at each other, that would have been my chance," he said. "It's important to go for it, even if it doesn't succeed all of the time."

Sebastian Lang is still third-placed on general classification, at only one second behind Linus Gerdemann (T-Mobile) and two seconds behind leader Vladimir Gusev (Discovery Channel).