Deutschland Tour: Ethan Vernon wins prologue

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Ethan Vernon (Ineos Grenadiers) won the 2.3km prologue at the Deutschland Tour around St. Wendel, the dominant ride putting him in the overall lead in the Pro Series stage race.

Mads Pedersen (Lidl-Trek) finished one second off Vernon’s time of 2:23 for second. Maikel Zijlaard (Tudor Pro Cycling) took the final spot on the podium, three seconds back, half a second better than the Bora-Hansgrohe pair of Danny Van Poppel and Nils Politt.

The 2.3-kilometre prologue in St. Wendel sorted out the general classification to begin the five days of racing with Vernon securing the first red leader’s jersey.

“It was actually quite tough. I was trying to hold back, but when you have the adrenaline you go full gas anyway,” Vernon said. “Everyone said it was a bit like a track effort, but it was really different because on a track you flat-line the pace, whereas here it was really riding different powers on the climb, recovering, accelerating around the corners. So you have to have a bit of a plan, but you hardly have time to look down at your computer.“

Vernon came into the German race a few weeks after winning the gold medal at UCI Track World Championships in the men’s elimination race. He said it was a bit difficult to transition from the track and back to the road.

“We had a couple of weeks on the track [before Glasgow] and World’s week you don’t really do much volume, so you have a few weeks where you don’t do much. Endurance is a bit hard when you come back, but obviously this was more of a track effort.

“You see how well Mads [Pedersen] is going the last few weeks, so for sure he was hard to beat. But I went before him anyway so I just had to go as hard as I can and hope he didn’t beat me.”

The opening day featured a relatively flat course, with five turns and a final left-hand sweeping corner to the finishing straight that brings riders back to the centre of town.

German Theo Reinhardt (Rad-Net Osswald) was the first rider of the 119 riders to cover the course, setting the marker at 2 minutes, 34 seconds. It was not until Marco Haller (Bora-Hansgrohe) crossed the line that the best time went under the two-and-a-half minute mark, his time 2:29, with two-thirds of the field still to go.

Sam Bennett grimaced as he crossed the line, moving his teammate from the hot seat with a time of 2:28. Then Australia’s Cameron Scott (Bahrain Victorious) moved into third, half a second behind Haller.

Danny van Poppel took his turn in the hot seat next for Bora-Hansgrohe, toppling his teammate by 2 seconds.

The Bora grip on the podium came apart when Rasmus Tiller (Uno-X) crossed the line, 1.7 seconds behind Van Poppel, and one rider later Madis Mihkels (Intermarché-Circus-Wanty) went ahead of Bennett and Haller. Jannik Steimle (Soudal-QuickStep) then came close to taking the top spot, finishing  just 0.4 seconds behind Van Poppel for second place.

As quickly as riders crossed the line in one-minute intervals, the top times came crashing down. Zijaard finished with a best time in 2:26 and then Vernon took over in 2:23.

Pedersen was next across the line and the only rider among the final five to come close to Vernon, falling short of the best time by one second.

The final rider on course, Brandon McNulty (UAE Team Emirates) in the stars-and-stripes jersey as US time trial champion, faded to finish just inside the top 30.

Alexander Kristoff (Uno-X) struggled on the course, shown briefly on TV cameras rubbing his shoulder, and finished well off the pace, 20 seconds off the winning pace.

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