Tour de Pologne: Tim Merlier wins stage 1 after crash-marred finale

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Stage 1 of the Tour de Pologne has seen Tim Merlier (Soudal-QuickStep) take a clear bunch sprint victory on a crash-marred finale at the Poznan motor-racing circuit.

After heavy rain showers and hailstorms briefly blasted the race late on and saw several riders fall in the closing kilometres, Merlier headed a reduced lead group of sprinters into the finishing straight.

The Belgian powered down the right-hand side to win by over a bike length ahead of Olav Kooij (Jumbo-Visma) with Fernando Gaviria (Movistar) in third.

With times for GC taken four kilometres from the line, Merlier’s victory, the 30th of his career, puts him in the lead for Sunday’s mountainous stage and challenging uphill finish at Karpacz.

“There were a lot of crashes today, and I just hope the other guys are ok. In the end, I got a great lead out and I could stay safe, luckily” commented Merlier.

Merlier has already won the opening stage of Paris-Nice, the UAE Tour and the Tour of Oman this season, but never, he said, on a racing circuit like the one that ended the 183-kilometre flat stage starting and finishing in Poznan.

“My legs are doing ok, for sure, I did an altitude camp at Val di Fassa and it went very well.” 

“I’m looking forward to the next opportunities. It’s always nice to go onto to the next stage with a win already in the pocket. Now the pressure is gone and I can be more relaxed.”

His win came on a great day for Soudal-QuickStep, as his teammate and compatriot Remco Evenepoel triumphed in the Clásica San Sebastián just a few minutes later. As Merlier recognised, “It’s always very special when the team takes two victories in the same day.” 

How it unfolded

Stage 1 of Tour de Pologne, kicked off with just one non-starter Julius Johansen (Intermarché-Circus-Wanty), after the Dane went down with COVID. Then almost as soon as it had left Poznan, four riders powered up the road: Kamil Malecki (Q.36.5); Filippo Ridolfo (Novo Nordisk); Norbert Banaszek and Patryk Stosz (both Poland National Team).

Former Polish national champ Banaszek picked up maximum points in the only classified climb of the day, cat. 3 Las Sucha, and then in the intermediate sprints that followed Stosz and Maleck divided the spoils in the sprints between the two of them.

However, the peloton, led by Soudal-QuickStep for their sprinter Tim Merlier, kept the gap at a minute for nearly the whole stage, and after the second sprint of the day, around 53 kilometres from the line, the four were reeled in.

What had been a largely uneventful opening day continued as the rain began to beat down hard, further discouraging any breakaways. Intense hail at the finish, followed by yet more heavy rain showers, caused one publicity banner to collapse on the motor circuit. Even if it finally dried out briefly for the final bunch sprint, the series of sudden downpours nonetheless rendered the approach roads much more slippy and waterlogged for the peloton, just as they were beginning to hit high speed for the build-up to the sprint.

The first of multiple crashes took place some 15 kilometres from the line, causing at least half a dozen riders to fall. Another crash happened with about 8 kilometres to go, and a third with about three kilometres from the line. There were no initial reports of serious injuries, but Pascal Ackerman (UAE Team Emirates), one of the top sprinters in the bunch, was amongst the multiple sprinters whose chances of success were affected. 

“We knew there was a big chance of rain,” Kooij, second behind Merlier, said. “We hoped to stay dry but then it started raining. You know  you need to be careful on the corners of the race track, specially where the oil is because of the car.”

“After the crashes, everybody saw how slippery was, so they paced it quite carefully,” he added.

Merlier praised the organisers pre-stage ruling that GC times be taken before the race moved onto the motor circuit, saying “doing that with four kilometres to go was the best decision they could make and the safest,” he said. But his victory, in any case, was more than clear.

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