Petit wins prologue in Luxembourg

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Three Frenchmen stood on the podium at the end of the Tour de Luxembourg's evening prologue on Wednesday. Adrien Petit (Cofidis) took the win along with the early leader's jersey of the five-day race. He covered the 2.67km course in the winning time of 3:58 minutes beating Europcar's Bryan Coquard by three seconds and Bretagne-Séché Environnement's Arnaud Gerard by an additional second.

Petit put on the leader's jersey at the end of the day and will wear it during stage 1's 212.6km race from Luxembourg to Küntzig on Thursday.

The Tour de Luxembourg prologue may have been short but it was held over cobbles and included a very steep hill, making it a challenging opener. Many riders were clocking in with times just at the four-and-a-half-minute mark but faster times started coming in after Lotto Soudal's Marcel Sieberg posted a 4:06.

Riders continued to race in with faster times that were getting closer to the four-minute mark, however, Petit was the only rider to break four minutes with a 3:58.

MTN-Qhubeka briefly thought that their rider Matthew Brammeier had won because organisers had incorrectly announced that he finished with a time of 3:52. In fact, the Irishman finished in last place with a time of 5:02 after an untimely mechanical forced him to walk the final kilometre of the course.

MTN-Qhubeka later released a team statement, explaining what happened, "There was a brief moment of excitement in the MTN-Qhubeka p/b Samsung camp as Matt Brammeier was initially said to have crossed the line with a blistering fast 3:52. This was clearly incorrect as Matt actually had to walk the final kilometer after succumbing to a mechanical incident."

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