BMC dominates Beauce's opening day

BMC Racing Team has enjoyed a strong start to its Tour de Beauce campaign, with the opening stage victory capping a successful day of racing for the squad. Swiss rider Danilo Wyss claimed BMC Racing Team its stage victory at the North American race, after out sprinting his four breakaway partners in the final sprint.

South Africa's Darren Lill (Team Type 1) took second place while Ryan Roth (Planet Energy) took a solid third place and was the highest finishing Canadian rider. Benjamin Day (Fly V Australia) and Scott Zwizanski (Kelly Benefit Strategies) filled the top five spots, while Great Britain's Tom Southam (Rapha Condor) fell off the group's rear over the closing kilometre to finish three seconds behind.

Wyss fought hard for his stage victory. The rider had missed the day's defining break, but together with a few other riders bridged across to the 10-strong lead group which included his team-mate Chad Beyer.

"With over 100 km to go, Chad had escaped with nine or 10 other riders," Wyss said. "Soon after that, Darren Lill counter-attacked and I made sure to follow his wheel since I knew he was the type of rider who could very well bridge up to the leaders."

After initiating the original breakaway 40 kilometres into the race, Beyer started collecting mountains points over the day's three climbs. Claiming the mountains classification lead wasn't a planned effort by American, but something he willingly took nonetheless.

"I wasn't really planning on going for the mountain points, the opportunity just presented itself and I took it," Beyer said. "There were three climbs today and I was first over two and second over the other."

BMC Racing Team also leads the teams classification, with a 23 second margin over Fly V Australia. Wyss holds the points classification lead over Lill.

BMC Racing Team director Mike Sayers isn't getting ahead of himself with his outfit's success. Sayers says there's plenty of challenges ahead over the remaining six stages.

"The crit is hard, the time trial is hard and the stages are always going up and down," Sayers said. "But the guys are obviously strong so we have a lot of options to play."

With the majority of the peloton now 4:32 minutes behind, Wyss is hopeful of defending the jersey. Just 13 riders are within 1:21 minutes of Wyss.

"For the rest of the race, we'll have to see how we go about defending the jerseys," Wyss said. "We certainly promise to make it as good of a race as possible, that's for sure."