Tour of Britain: Groenewegen wins stage 1

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This was Jumbo-Visma’s day at the Tour of Britain, with the Dutch team in total control of the stage and their sprinter Dylan Groenewegen dominating the finish of the 201 kilometre stage from Glasgow to Kircudbright in clinical style from Davide Cimolai of Israel Cycling Academy and Matteo Trentin of Mitchelton-Scott, with pre-race favourite Mathieu Van der Poel coming fourth. 

“After the Tour de France I was tired, and got a bit unlucky in some of the races but now my legs have come good again,” said the 26-year-old Groenewegen after landing his 12th individual win of a season which has included team time trial and sprint stages in the Tour de France and a brace in Paris-Nice. 

Jumbo-Visma kept the entire stage under control, unflustered by a long-range break featuring Jacob Scott (Swift Carbon ProCycling), Dries de Bondt (Correndon-Circus), Rory Townsend (Canyon DHB) and James Fouche (Wiggins). The move started out as six riders, then was cut back to four after Conor Dunne dropped back to work for Cimolai and Ag2R’s Gediminas Bagdonas also disappeared. 

Behind the break, Jumbo put Koen Bouwman and Pascal Eenkhorn on the front, pulling the quartet back to around a minute through the Galloway hills at 60 kilometres to go, and finally bringing the race together with seven kilometres remaining. Of the quartet, Townsend picked up enough bonus seconds at intermediate sprints to end the day second overall, while Scott took an early grip on the King of the Mountains prize.

“Today, we had no help from any of the other teams, so we had to do everything. We put Koen and Pascal on the front and then I got a really good leadout,” said Groenewegen, who timed his sprint perfectly, with Mike Teunissen, Jos Van Emden and Amund Grondal Jansen bringing him to the front with four kilometres to go of a run-in that was relatively straightforward and devoid of road furniture. 

Groenewegen’s lead-out men disappeared in the final kilometre, but their sprinter latched onto Mitchelton-Scott’s Matteo Trentin and then moved forward as the British champion Ben Swift launched himself forwards. With Trentin to his left, Swift to his right, the Dutchman had no option but to go down the middle, and he then moved just enough to his left to discourage Trentin as the road curved slightly 50 metres before the line. 

Cimolai and Van der Poel both left their efforts relatively late, but the Italian got no closer than a bike length to the flying Groenewegen, with Swift fading for fifth place. All of which left Groenewegen in the race leader’s jersey with Townsend three seconds behind, but with the prospect of a second sprint stage over similar roads to the east through the border country, starting and finishing at the town of Kelso. Shorter than the opening day at 165km, the Kelso stage looked slightly hillier with three second category ascents, but the flat run-in made it look promising for the Jumbo machine.