Martinez wins Route du Sud opening stage

Yannick Martinez (La Pomme Marseille) sprinted to victory in the opening stage of the Route du Sud and earned the first leader's jersey of the French four-day stage race. Anthony Roux (FDJ) and Adrien Petit (Cofidis, Solutions Credits) rounded out the top three in the field sprint finale.

With the time bonuses factored in, Martinez holds the leader's jersey with a four-second lead on Roux with Thomas Rostollan (La Pomme Marseille) in third overall, also at four seconds.

The 209km stage from Castres to Mirande, the longest of the Route du Sud, was dominated by a three-rider escape which formed in the opening kilometres. Rostollan, Romain Hardy (Cofidis, Solutions Credits) and Emanuele Sella (Androni Giocattoli) quickly rode to an advantage in excess of eight minutes, but once Movistar and AG2R-La Mondiale upped the tempo in the peloton the break's lead began to steadily decrease.

Midway through the opening stage rain began to fall and with Europcar and BigMat-Auber93 also contributing to the chase effort the race came back together inside of 20km remaining.

For their efforts off the front, Rostollan would take the sprint jersey while Hardy picked up the mountains jersey.

A technical and rolling finale saw a flurry of attacks from the peloton, but nothing was able to stay away resulting in a field sprint finish taken by UCI Continental rider Yannick Martinez, who claimed his second win of the 2013 season.