Thomas Gachignard (Team TotalEnergies) won a two-up sprint to the finish line to win the opening stage at the Tour du Limousin-Périgord-Nouvelle Aquitaine.
Launching his sprint first from about 400 metres out, he held off late-race breakaway companion and runner-up Ewen Costiou (Arkéa-B&B Hotels) in La Courtine.
Although chasers Alexandre Delettre (Total Energies) and Andrea Vendrame (Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale) weren't able to make it across to the leaders, they managed to stay ahead of the chasing peloton by a whisker and crossed the finish line to claim third and fourth place, respectively.
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Gachignard leads the overall classification as the race heads into stage 2's 174.3km race from Thiviers to the summit of Grèzes (Les Côteaux Périgourdins) on Wednesday.
The opening stage of the four-day Tour du Limousin-Périgord-Nouvelle Aquitaine was no simple affair, with a route that included three categorized ascents in the final third of the 184.6km race from Panazol to La Courtine. While the course was undulating throughout, the final climbs happened in succession over Côte de Liffaud, Côte d'Abbas-Féniers and Côte de la Croid de la Mission.
An early breakaway included Simon Guglielmi (Arkéa-B&B Hotels), Pablo Lospitao (Caja Rural-Alea), Iván Cobo (Equipo Kern Pharma), Joan Albert Riera (Illes Balears Arabay), Théo Delacroix (St Michel-Preference Home-Auber93) and Kenny Molly (Van Rysel Roubaix).
The riders gained nearly two minutes on the peloton as TotalEnergies and Intermarché-Wanty, but that dropped to under a minute with around 60km remaining.
The breakaway pushed on, but as the roads became more challenging and the bulk of the climbing in view, Riera was the first rider to be distanced, leaving six riders out front.
They held a slim lead over the first of three climbs, Côte de Liffaud, but they were reeled back in to the main peloton on the Côte d'Abbas-Féniers and a new breakaway forming that included Geoffrey Bouchard (Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale), Ewen Costiou (Arkéa-B&B Hotels), Sylvain Moniquet (Cofidis), Alexandre Delettre and Thomas Gachignard (both Team TotalEnergies), Axel Mariault (CIC-U-Nantes) and Andrea Mifsud (Nice Métropole Côte d'Azur).
The seven riders extended their lead to half a minute on the roads toward the final climb, Côte de la Croix de la Mission, but with Groupama-FDJ joining the efforts at the front of the peloton, their gap was reduced to just 20 seconds over the top and inside 10km to go.
Costiou and Gachignard attacked on the narrow, winding roads inside the last five kilometres. Although Delettre attempted a solo chase, he was not able to make it across, but was later joined by Andrea Vendrame (Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale), who had jumped out of the main field.
The two leaders, Gachignard and Costiou, held their gap on the run-in to the finish with Gachignard launching his sprint early and holding off Costiou to take the win.
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