Tour of Denmark: Wout van Aert wins comeback race on stage 1 with powerful sprint from small group

Wout van Aert (Visma-Lease a Bike) stormed to victory in his first race back since missing the Tour de France, beating Lukáš Kubiš (Unibet Rose Rockets) and Henrik Pedersen (Uno-X Mobility) to the line in Aarlborg from a small group.

A hilly circuit focused around the Mølleparken (0.7km at 6%) climb decided the finale on the opening day, with a small group of six getting away on the penultimate lap up the narrow hill: Pedersen, Tim Torn Teutenberg (Lidl-Trek), Christophe Laporte (Visma-Lease a Bike), Pier-André Côté (NSN), Kubiš, and a teammate of the latter's, Tomáš Kopecký.

They cooperated well enough to stay ahead before the final lap of the circuit, but on the last time up the Mølleparken, Van Aert attacked across with Søren Kragh Andersen (Lidl-Trek) to make it eight riders in the front.

Making it into the final kilometre and set to play out the sprint, Kubiš let Kopecký and Teutenberg get a small gap off the front, forcing Laporte into action. The Frenchman had enough in the tank, though, leading Van Aert back to the German's back wheel where he launched his sprint.

Van Aert stormed into the lead with the line in sight, with Kubiš and Pedersen threatening to come around him in the final 100 metres, but neither had timed their effort as well as the Paris-Roubaix champion, who celebrated a successful return from his elbow injury and infection with his right arm aloft.

His first race since stage 5 of the Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, Van Aert even bounced back from a crash midway through the stage, when a large portion of the peloton was taken down at high speed with 70km to go, when crosswinds made the bunch nervous.

A former overall winner of the Tour of Denmark from 2018, Van Aert takes the leader's blue jersey into the second stage with a four-second lead over Kubiš. He will have another chance to go for victory on the flat second 183km stage from Glyngøre to Skive.

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