A narrow gap between Ben Turner (Netcompany Ineos) and the barriers was all Riley Sheehan (NSN) needed to power through to a bunch sprint victory in the hilly stage 1 of the Czech Tour.
The rider from Boulder, Colorado went neck-and-neck with pre-race favourite Turner from about 200 metres from the line at Karlovy Vary, before diving through what littel space was available late on to claim his second win of the 2026 season.
Third on the opening stage of the four-day race was Romet Pajur (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe rookies) with Modern Adventure's Scott McGill in fourth.
Sheehan's victory sets him up as the first leader of the Czech Tour before the race moves into the high mountains on stage 2.
"I think I felt confident we'd catch the breakaway," Sheehan told race organisation broadcasters. "Ineos rode super-strong all day, and the chaos of the finish, we all watched it last year, we saw how the group split. [But] I had a phenomenal team to back me up.
"We played our cards right and they all came together at the final and positioned me perfect. It was a perfect day."
Sheehan finds the gap
The first attack of the day came thanks to Pepijn Reinderink (Soudal-QuickStep), Martin Voltr (ATT Investments) and Jose Černy (Kasper crypto4me), and this three-man breakaway then sparked a counter-move by United Shipping's Michal Schuran who joined.
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Modern Adventure and Netcompany Ineos were not going to miss out on the one sprint opportunity of the race, though, and with 30 kilometres to go and just a minute's gap, the four began attacking each other, rather than collaborate, leading to the break's collapse..
Things briefly took an unexpected turn on a hilly segment on the run-in when Svesta-Bardseng Embret (Netcompany-Ineos) and Paul Fietzke (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe) powered a brief dig away. Once sucked in on a long descent, though, Netcompany Ineos returned to working for Turner as they had done throughout the day, while Caja Rural-Seguros RGA briefly contributed to keeping things under control on the front.
On the twisting approach through a wooded gorge and into the spa town of Karlovy Vary, the pace stayed very high, Netcompany led things out on the sweeping series of left and right hand bends. Turner went for broke early, only to find Sheehan timing his counter-move perfectly to shadow the rider on the slight uphill to the line.
The Netcompany rider squeezed things down a little, but did not block his opponent at all and despite almost brushing elbows with the Briton, Sheehan found his way through to the third career win and, at 25, the first stage race lead of his career, too.
Friday's stage will begin the GC battle in earnest, with a 16km Cat.1 ascent of Ješted the first major summit finish of three.
"I'll try and hang on for dear life," Sheehan said "It was a good sprint for me today and maybe tomorrow is another opportunity. It's not the hardest climb, just hard at the final, and if I can hang for a short climb, it'd be good."
"But we've got [teammate] Jan Hirt, too, he's a strong guy and he's flying and he's in his home country, so we'll see what we can do for him."
Alasdair Fotheringham has been reporting on cycling since 1991. He has covered every Tour de France since 1992 bar one, as well as numerous other bike races of all shapes and sizes, ranging from the Olympic Games in 2008 to the now sadly defunct Subida a Urkiola hill climb in Spain. As well as working for Cyclingnews, he has also written for The Independent, The Guardian, ProCycling, The Express and Reuters.
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