Benelux Tour: Tim Merlier wins opening stage

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Tim Merlier (Alpecin-Fenix) triumphed on the opening stage of the Benelux Tour, sprinting to victory from a group of 30 after crosswinds had split the field into pieces. 

The Belgian sprinter held off Phil Bauhaus (Bahrain Victorious) in the dash for the line in Dokkum, with Alvaro Hodeg (Deceuninck-QuickStep) taking the final podium spot. 

The opening stage of the week-long race saw winds in the northern Netherlands split the race into echelons, with significant time gaps appearing on the first day of racing. 

Remco Evenepoel (Deceuninck-QuickStep) had made the front echelon but broke his front wheel with 30km to go and went on to finish almost a minute in arrears in a chasing pack that also contained Geraint Thomas (Ineos Grenadiers), Tom Dumoulin (Jumbo-Visma), and Greg Van Avermaet (AG2R Citroën). 

Peter Sagan (Bora-Hansgrohe) missed the first echelon and then crashed out of the second, eventually finishing nearly two and a half minutes down. 

The 169.6km opening stage was pan flat but took riders up for a winding route near the North Sea coast, where the exposed roads quickly saw the peloton split into five groups in the final 50km. 

Bahrain Victorious put five of their riders in the 40-man front group, while Evenepoel was present and correct alongside his teammate, the Tour of Flanders champion Kasper Asgreen. 

The big names to miss out were Sagan, Dumoulin, Van Avermaet, Gianni Moscon (Ineos Grenadiers), and Ivan Cortina (Movistar), who were all in a 20-rider chase group. Geraint Thomas was caught in the third echelon, but those groups did come together into one large chasing pack nearer the finish. 

Evenepoel broke his spokes with 29km to go and took an age to get a new wheel from neutral service. The frustrated Belgian had to watch the second echelon zip past, but he did manage to tag onto the third, before the groups came back together. 

At the finish, he had shipped 57 seconds to the front group, which contained many of the pre-race favourites. Sagan, up the road from Evenepoel at the time, then crashed and vented his own anger but was unable to back even into the swelled chase group, and he trundled home at 2:25. 

The stage concluded with two laps of a 12km finishing circuit, with the so-called ‘golden kilometre’ of three bonus sprints coming towards the end of the first lap. Matej Mohoric (Bahrain Victorious), Mike Teunissen (Jumbo-Visma), and Lukas Pöstlberger (Bora-Hansgrohe) all claimed four seconds, before Tiesj Benoot (Team DSM), Sonny Colbrelli (Bahrain Victorious), and Asgreen came through for the last sprint and triggered a brief breakaway attempt. 

The front group then stayed together until the finish, losing only four riders to the windy section on the second lap, and with Pöstlberger then only rider to try and solo clear in the finale. The Austrian was caught with 500 metres to go and the sprint was launched soon after.

Hodeg was the first to hit out but Merlier came from behind and surged clear. Bauhaus, who had to ease off the pedals when Hodeg burst through, came back strongly but Merlier had enough to hold on for his eighth win of the season.

"It was extremely hectic," said Merlier. "I don't know how, but it just happened. I had to do a sprint for that echelon. From then on I knew that I had to play along and not let myself be surprised on the crucial points.

"I felt good in the final, but it was difficult. There was also an attack, but Gianni [Vermeersch] was the ideal man for that. He could respond to anyone. In the end everything worked out and it is a great victory for the team."