Rowe wins first stage of Tour of Britain for Sky

Luke Rowe (Sky) won the opening stage of the Tour of Britain, taking the sprint in Norfolk ahead of Boy van Poppel (UnitedHealthcare) and Russell Downing (Endura). The stage winner also took the overall lead.

Mark Cavendish of Team Sky was the outright favourite to win the flat opening stage, but a crash in the final kilometres took the Manx Missile out of contention, gifting the win to his young team mate Luke Rowe, who only stepped into the six man line up at the last minute to replace Edvald Boasson Hagen.

After he pulled on the race leaders gold jersey in Norwich for the biggest win of his career, Rowe said Bullishly, "I'm not going to rule myself out of contention for the overall."

The opening stage of the ninth Tour of Britain started beside the regenerated docks of Ipswich and as million pounds yachts cruised up and down the river Orwell in the warm sunshine of a late British summer the thousands of fans at the start may have thought they were in Monaco. It was a fitting that the centre of attention was the huge state of the art bus of Team Sky, which was surrounded by fans hungry for a glimpse of Bradley Wiggins.

The crowd erupted as Wiggings went to sign on but it was Cavendish who led the 102 riders out of Ipswich along the banks of the river Orwell on the 203km stage, the longest of this year's race. However, a group of four riders decided that they were going to try and spoil the Sky party and headed off alone after only two miles. The quartet was, Jonny Clarke (UnitedHealthcare Pro Cycling), Kristian House (Rapha Condor), Sean Downy (An Post Sean Kelly) and Rony Martias (Saur-Sojasun). Although the three categorised hills barely registered on the heart monitors, and much of the stage had a tailwind, it was the heat, which touched 30 degrees centigrade, which was taking its toll on the foursome.

Despite their efforts the group started to disintegrate within the last 10 kilometres as Team Sky worked hard to close the gap which had been as high as six minutes earlier in the day. Any talk at yesterday's press conference of Mark Cavendish leaving the British team, didn't seem to effect the work rate of his team mates as Wiggins, Bernhard Eisel, Jeremy Hunt, Christian Knees and Luke Rowe took turns at the front.

The work of the Sky train, proved fruitless for Cavendish as he went down in the Norfolk showground within two kilometres of the finish.

Instead of the predicted bunch sprint, the lead riders came in dribs and drabs with 22 year old Rowe outsprinting Boy Van Poppel (UnitedHealthcare Pro Cycling) and fellow Brit Russell Downing (Endura Racing). Rowe said, "It was pretty incredible to win today. It was quite unexpected, but this is the biggest win to date so I'm very happy. Coming towards the end of the race we had Brad on the front and I was behind him and Cav was sitting third because we were lining the stage up for him but I looked round when he went down and shouted to Brad 'It's for me' so we went full gas."

The young Welshman went on, "The weather was really hot today and actually and was a bit of a shock to the system but I've done a lot of racing abroad so I suppose I'm used to it. I'm looking forward to stage 6 into Caerphilly because it's almost in my back garden. The mountain is about a mile from my house so friends and family are coming to watch. The support on the road today was incredible and I've never seen crowds like it. It's really great because the British fans really know what they are talking about and don't just shout a lot of old crap when you go past!"

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