Viviani wins Tour Down Under opener in Adelaide

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Elia Viviani (Deceuninck-QuickStep) relied on a furious burst of speed after a chaotic run to the finish in Port Adelaide to win stage 1 of the 2019 Santos Tour Down Under on Tuesday, overtaking Team Sunweb's Max Walscheid, who appeared to have the sprint wrapped up before Viviani seemingly came from out of nowhere to take the win.

CCC Team's Jakub Mareczko was third, with Bahrain-Merida's Phil Bauhaus in fourth and Dimension Data's Ryan Gibbons fifth. Pre-race favourites Caleb Ewan (Lotto Soudal) and Peter Sagan (Bora-Hansgrohe) both got caught up in the unorganised finish and slipped out of contention. Sagan finished eighth, while Ewan was 23rd.

"It was a headwind sprint, and you don't want to be at the front too early," Viviani said as he greeted the gathering press after the podium celebrations.

"It's never easy, and you just have to wait. If you go 50m too early, then you kill yourself," Viviani added. "In that moment, I saw the space on the left. If there wasn't space then I would not have tried, because I'm not crazy. I felt I could get through, and there was maybe a little touch with Bauhaus, but when I passed on the left, I felt it was a good move. When I went by him, I could just focus on the finish line."

In the overall race, Viviani now leads the overall by four seconds over Walscheid, but a day in the breakaway paid off for Patrick Bevin (CCC Team), Michael Storer (Team Sunweb) and Jason Lea (UniSA-Australia), who broke away early in the day but were caught with about 40 km remaining. They did manage to snatch up enough time bonuses to make it into the top 10 overall, with Bevin's five seconds in bonuses slotting him into third, and Storer moving into in fourth, both five seconds back. Lea is eighth at eight seconds.

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