Sprint seals stage win for Thömel

Image 1 of 5

Tino Thömel of Team NSP was the winner of the first stage of 17th international tour of Greece. After 149 km and a powerful sprint in Preveza, west of the country, the German topped LKT Brandenberg teammates Niklas Arndt and Stefan Schäfer to don the blue leader's jersey.

"I m very happy for my victory, my teammates did a very good job for me, but tomorrow there is an individual time trial, so it will be difficult for me to keep the light blue jersey," Thömel said.

The green points jersey is on the shoulders of Dean Podgornik (Manisaspor) and the red jersey of the king of the mountains classification went to Periklis Ilias (SP Tableware).

Ilias spent the early part of the race up the road ahead of the group with Podgornik in order to gain the points toward the mountain classification, but the peloton caught them just a few kilometres before the line of the intermediate sprint.

Podgornik claimed both intermediate sprints, while Ilias got away with teammate Ioannis Tamouridis to take the mountain prize.

A group of three with Podgornik, Esad Hasanovic (Partizan Powermove) and Gabor Kasa (Manisaspor) gained a maximum of 2:15, but were reeled in with 3km to go.

Results