Degenkolb wins stage 1 of Picardie

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Following his two wins in last week's Four Days of Dunkirk, John Degenkolb (Argos-Shimano) continued his run of good form with a sprint victory in stage 1 of the Tour de Picardie. The 23-year-old German outkicked Takashi Miyazawa (Saxo Bank) and 2008 champion Sébastien Chavanel (Europcar) in Braine to notch his third win of the season.

"Cheng Ji worked very hard today to retrieve the attackers," said Degenkolb. "Then the team protected me well and Tom Veelers gave me the perfect lead-out. That he finished fifth says it all. I’m proud of the team. Today everything was 100 percent right."

With time bonuses factored in, Degenkolb also holds the leader's yellow jersey by four seconds over Miyazawa with Chavanel in third at six seconds. Degenkolb has ambitions to keep the leader's jersey through to the final stage.

"Saturday will be a difficult stage with some hills in the final," said Degenkolb. "We will have to control the race and everyone will look at us, but I’m hopeful that we can keep the jersey and maybe win a stage too."

Only 5.5km into 166.5km stage from Clermont to Braine, Jonathan Hivert (Saur-Sojasun) plus Movistar teammates Ivan Gutiérrez and Jesús Herrada López went on the attack and were quickly joined by Leonardo Duque (Cofidis) to form the day's early escape. This first breakaway stuck and the riders gradually increased their gap on the peloton to more than three minutes at the summit of the Côte de Mareuil-la-Motte (km 40.5).

The riders at the front of the race worked together smoothly but fought for the intermediate sprints – with Gutiérrez prevailing in Brétigny (km 65.5) and Herrada López in Braine (km 143.5) – and the mountain classification, with Gutiérrez, Hivert and Duque taking the first three climbs on today's menu.

The bunch stirred into action when the sprinters' teams, led by Argos-Shimano, FDJ-BigMat and AG2R-La Mondiale, started to set a decent pace to keep the peloton within striking distance of the breakaway. The gap melted gradually and the escapees were clinging onto a 30-second advantage at the first crossing of the finish line in Braine, 24 kilometres from the finish.

The last survivor of the early breakaway, Herrada López, was the first cyclist over the Mont Hussard (km 147), ten seconds ahead of a peloton led by Bretagne-Schuller’s Geoffroy Lequatre. The bunch came back together on the descent, but Europcar's Yohann Gêne and Bretagne-Schuller’s Johan Le Bon forged ahead to open a gap of 20 seconds. Their good teamwork was not enough to prevent the two Frenchmen from being engulfed two kilometres from the finish by the peloton, led by an Argos-Shimano team bent on ensuring a mass sprint in Braine.

The sprint was disrupted inside the final kilometre when four riders crashed 600 metres from the finish line, but John Degenkolb's Argos-Shimano teammates set him up perfectly to take the stage win.

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