Deutschland Tour stage 1: Matthew Brennan awarded victory over Jonathan Milan in a photo-finish sprint

Matthew Brennan (Visma-Lease a Bike) claimed the victory in a reduced bunch sprint on stage 1 of the Deutschland Tour, narrowly out-pacing Jonathan Milan (Lidl-Trek) with a late bike throw to the line in Herford.

Danny van Poppel (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe) was third on the stage.

"It's really nice. It was such a hectic final, and there's so much stress taken away by the guys - they just put me in the right place. We went for the bonus sprints, and we lost each other a little bit. But in the end, it saved enough mental energy to go for it in the end."

Milan appeared to have won the stage, but instead, threw his bike a moment too soon and lost out to Brennan's late charge.

"I knew it was really close. It was so fast, and I went for the lunge right at the end. I thought I just had him, but you never know. I'm super ecstatic."

The battle for the overall classification started with the time bonus sprint with 6.5km to go when Wout van Aert (Visma-Lease a Bike) came from behind to snatch the three-second bonus ahead of Sam Watson (Ineos Grenadiers).

That result brought Van Aert level with prologue winner Søren Wærenskjold (Uno-X Mobility) and Watson one second ahead.

Although Brennan, nine seconds behind in the GC after the prologue, earned a ten-second bonus for the stage win, it wasn't enough to assure him the race lead as the tie-breaker came from the fractions of a second in the opening time trial.

Instead, Van Poppel claimed the jersey with a fraction of 0.36 seconds to Watson's 0.52 and Brennan's 0.56.

"We know it's really important to get the seconds every day. Today was a good day for seconds and it will be decided by seconds," van Poppel said.

"Milan was on my wheel so I had no chance, but I felt powerful and the team did an amazing job, they dropped me off super well but there were two guys faster than me.

"It will be a tough stage tomorrow so we have to drop the faster guys. It's a really important race for the team, and we are now in the leader's jersey but it can change tomorrow."

The mostly flat stage was dominated by a four-rider breakaway with Andrew August (Ineos Grenadiers), Vinzent Dorn (BikeAid), Miguel Heidemann and Jon Knolle (REMBE-rad-net).

There were two small climbs along the route, both won by Heidemann to move him into the lead of the mountains classification.

The move was nullified with 13km to go, setting up a sprint led by Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe for Van Poppel. While the Dutch champion didn't get the win, he earned the next best thing, the lead of the race thanks to the 0.16 second advantage on Wednesday.

Brennan leads the points classification.

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