Mezgec wins stage one of Tour of Beijing

Luka Mezgec (Giant-Shimano) picked up where he left off at the Tour of Beijing with a sprint victory into Zhangjiakou on stage one. The Slovenian, who claimed his first WorldTour victory in the final stage of the 2013 Tour of Beijing, overhauled a tiring Tyler Farrar (Garmin-Sharp) to win by a clear margin. Farrar hung on to take third, with young Australian Caleb Ewan beating him into second place.

Sky did much of the work leading into the twisting finale, with Orica-GreenEdge joining the party in the closing kilometres. Edvald Boasson Hagen took the initiative in bringing back the inevitable attacks in the final 10 kilometres. The Norwegian led the bunch with three kilometres remaining, but the team seemed to have miscalculated somewhat as Ben Swift was left well down the bunch as it hit the final corner.

Garmin’s Steele von Hoff kicked off the sprint, setting up his teammate Tyler Farrar. There was nothing the American could do to hold off the charging Mezgec, who powered down the centre of the road. Ewan, who claimed silver in the under-23 Worlds and only joined Orica-GreenEdge as a stagiaire in August, put in an impressive performance to pip Farrar for second. Mezgec now leads the general classification by four seconds over Ewan, by virtue of the 10-second bonus he took at the finish. He also heads up the points classification.

“That’s a fantastic comeback to this race and I hope we can do something more this week,” a delighted Mezgec said at the finish. “I feel honoured that I can be a player on the flat stages. It’s a big compliment for me as a second year as a professional.

"I suffered today as it was constantly up and down and the race was at quite high altitude for a long time. The team was strong in helping control early on and then keeping me in position when it was hard, keeping me fresher for the finish. The plan was to stick me in the right wheel at the front in the final few kilometres and this worked perfectly. It's great to win again here in Beijing and hopefully we can continue this week with other opportunities for us. It will be hard to defend the overall in the next few days before the mountain stage but we will see tomorrow how it is."

Clear and mud

The smoggy skies that forced some of the riders to don protective masks during pre-race training still hung over the Beijing sky-line. There were no masks today, however, as the riders rolled out of Chong Li on Friday morning. A rolling day lay ahead of them, with three classified climbs, before a long sweeping descent towards the finish in Zhangjiakou.

It wasn’t long after the flag dropped when the first attack of the day went off the front, as a three-man move with Jérémy Roy (FDJ.fr), Tosh Van de Sande (Lotto-Belisol) and Christophe Kern (Europcar) forged clear. The trio quickly established a lead and had almost three minutes on the peloton by kilometre 10. The advantage continued to grow to a maximum of 8:15 at the 50-kilometre mark before the peloton began to reel them back in.

Lampre-Merida’s Nelson Oliveira became the race’s first casualty, as he was forced to abandon with a cold. Back in the bunch, Team Sky took control of the peloton for most of the day, although they didn’t push the pace hard through the Beijing smog and the race was run close to its slowest schedule.

As the leaders closed in on the second and final sprint of the day, Roy dispatched of his two breakaway companions who chose to wait for the peloton. The Frenchman tried valiantly, but Sky’s increased efforts on the front of the peloton ended his lone effort with 20 kilometres remaining. The sprinters’ teams managed the inevitable attacks, ensuring the expected bunch gallop to the line.

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