Arguably the easiest stage on this year’s route, these 153.5km take the race into the heart of Champagne country to finish in the beautiful cathedral city of Reims.
While not as flat as previous stages, there are no significant lumps and it’s a relatively short distance. That means that there’s barely time for any breakaway riders to build a useful advantage before the sprinters’ teams will gather to chase them down.
A possible complicating factor is the wind on Champagne’s exposed plains, but it would have to be some breeze to trouble the peloton enough to lead to a split. Nevertheless, if it is windy you can expect the riders to be nervous. Ultimately, that’s likely to mean that crashes are a bigger threat to the favourites than the formation of echelons.
Stage profile
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Maggie Coles-Lyster wins Tour Down Under Women's One-Day Race, sprinting from reduced bunch after crashes hit final kilometres
Canadian sprints to victory at ProSeries event in Australia after crashing two laps before finish -
‘A few things that we want to tweak’ - Runner up spot again for Matthew Brennan in Tour Down Under stage 1 but optimistic for next chance
“We're very aware of what we need to work on now and we're very confident that we can fix that," says rider from Great Britain who is leading the young rider classification -
As it happened: Danish rider outsprints favourites to win stage 1 at Tour Down Under
Peloton take on three ascents of Menglers Hill and a flat finish after a wickedly fast descent into Tanunda -
Tour Down Under: Tobias Lund Andresen edges Matthew Brennan to win stage 1
Dane takes ochre leader's jersey as Sam Welsford is third in Tanunda
