Circuit de la Sarthe: Mads Pedersen wins hilly opener

Image 1 of 20

Mads Pedersen (Trek-Segafredo) won the opening stage of the Circuit Cycliste Sarthe - Pays de la Loire, taking a sprint finish from the 10-rider breakaway.

Pedersen held off Benoît Cosnefroy (AG2R-Citroën) for the victory on stage 1, while third place was taken by Axel Zingle (Cofidis).

Stage 1 saw four riders establish the early breakaway: Alexander Kamp (Trek-Segafedo), Sean Quinn (EF Education-EasyPost), Alexis Gougeard (B&B Hotels p/b KTM), Maël Guégan (U Nantes Atlantique). The foursome pushed out for a lead of three minutes, with Guégan scooping up the KOM points on the three categorised climbs that were crowded in the first half of the 192.3km stage.

Ineos Grenadiers worked at the front of the peloton to close down the gap, and soon put two riders in an eight-rider group after 120km had been completed: Filippo Ganna and Luke Plapp (Ineos Grenadiers), Pederson, Cosnefroy, Zingle, Sean Quinn (EF Education-EasyPost), Alexis Gougeard (B&B, Hotels p/b KTM), and Kevin Vauquelin (Arkéa-Samsic). They were joined with less than 32km to go by Alexander Kamp (Trek-Segafredo) and Thibaut Pinot (Groupama-FDJ) for a solid 10-rider front group of heavy hitters.

On the sixth and final circuit in Mamers with 16km to go, the group had an advantage of 1:15 seconds that was cut in half as the group make the final ascent of the 4.4 per cent climb mid-way through the lap.

Pedersen launched an attack with two kilometers to the line. His move was countered by his breakaway companions, minus Kamp, and then he made a final move on the downhill finish.

"With 2km to go I was thinking I could go on the attack instead and make the others chase. Luke Plapp from Ineos didn't give me a very long leash though. I got back to the group with 1.5 kms to go and recovered a bit for the sprint," Pedersen said..

"The last guy attacked before the final corner with 700 metres to go and I had to close it. In that situation there's nothing else you can do but ride hard and hope for the best. I still believed in my sprint, even If I had to spend energy closing the gap, I thought I could still win. It was hard, but I managed to close him in time, take a few breaths, and then go for the sprint."

Pedersen continued aggressive racing that had landed him an eighth-place finish at the Tour of Flanders on Sunday. With the victory, his third of the season, he takes both the race leader's jersey and the points jersey.

"Since the start of the season, it was in my plan to race this after Flanders. My coach thought it was a good idea, and I agreed. This way, I get to do more racing and then just have one training block afterward before Roubaix," explained Mads. "It was a hard and long day, and the weather was not super nice. It was not easy [in the break] as we did not have a lot of time. It was hard racing all the way. The peloton was chasing us hard from behind and didn't give us much time and that made it tough."