Deutschland Tour: Ackermann wins stage 1

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Pascal Ackermann (Bora-Hansgrohe) continued to mine a rich vein of form, taking out a hectic bunch sprint on the opening stage of the Deutschland Tour. Led out to perfection by teammate Rüdiger Selig, Ackermann held off the Bahrain Victorious duo of Phil Bauhaus and Marco Haller.

A crash with two kilometres to go disrupted the build-up to the sprint, with Deceuninck-QuickStep losing Mark Cavendish in the chaos. The Belgian team nonetheless led deep into the final kilometre before being overtaken by Selig and Ackermann ahead of the last turn.

Ackermann also won the opening stage of his home tour in 2019 when the race was last held, and now takes the race leader's jersey into the 180.6km stage 2 from Sangerhausen to Ilmenau with four seconds on Bauhaus and six on Haller.

The opening stage started out with rain, heading from Germany's Baltic coast in Stralsund for a mostly flat 191km stage to Schwerin.

Six riders attacked from the gun, with five German riders keen to put on a show in their home tour. Henri Uhlig (German National Team), Justin Wolf (Bike Aid), Joshua Huppertz (Team Lotto-Kern Haus), Robert Jägeler (P & S Metalltechnik) and Jon Knolle (Team SKS Sauerland NRW) were joined by Belgian Alex Colman (Sport Vlaanderen-Baloise).

The breakaway built up a lead of 2:30 with Deceuninck-QuickStep controlling the gap for Tour de France green jersey winner Cavendish. Unfortunately, the Manxman was involved in a crash but rejoined just after the intermediate sprint in Rostock after 78.5km of racing. Wolf won the sprint ahead of Jägeler and Uhlig as the breakaway kept rolling.

Ahead of the only classified climb in Rubow, Jägeler launched an attack to claim the first mountains jersey, taking the sprint ahead of Huppertz and Colman with 40km to go. The surge jettisoned Uhlig, leaving five riders to battle to stay ahead of the peloton, which lagged just over a minute behind.

Bahrain Victorious, UAE Team Emirates, Bora-Hansgrohe and Israel Start-Up Nation came forward in the bunch to help whittle down the gap with 27km to go and the surge had an immediate impact on the breakaway's advantage. Five kilometres later, the five leaders had only a dozen seconds and what had been a glimmer of hope was entirely dashed by the WorldTour teams.

There was still one more intermediate sprint in Schwerin, and Knolle attacked to take the points but was overtaken by Huppertz. Wolf managed to scramble across and, taking advantage of a brief lull by the peloton, the trio pulled the gap open to 35 seconds.

The peloton got organised and, with 10km to go, Uno-X, Bahrain Victorious, and the German National Team for John Degenkolb took over the chase and began whittling away at the gap. Knoll, Huppertz and Wolf survived until 5km to go just ahead of the time bonus sprint. Huppertz leapt away to take the prime ahead of Wolf and Knolle, who were soon reeled in by the Uno-X led bunch.

Huppertz finally succumbed to the chase by Deceuninck-Quickstep with 3.6km to go and the sprint was on. Uno-X powered to the fore in the final 2km but a big crash disrupted the build-up, with UAE Team Emirates, Alpecin-Fenix and Intermarché-Wanty-Gobert Matériaux all losing riders to the tarmac. Cavendish was left behind in the melee but Quickstep continued to lead into the final kilometre.

Bora-Hansgrohe took over for Ackermann into the final turn and he just had enough to hold off the Bahrain Victorious riders.