Tour of Britain: Wout van Aert wins opening stage

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Wout van Aert (Jumbo-Visma) won the first stage of the Tour of Britain, and took the overall race lead, proving to be the strongest in a reduced bunch sprint. 

Positioning was crucial given the speed of the final kilometre, and Van Aert was well-placed entering the short, steep ramp up to the finish. 

Though Julian Alaphilippe (Deceuninck-Quickstep) launched a trademark attack with 600m to go, he could not escape the marauding bunch and Van Aert leapfrogged him in the sprint to take the win.

Nils Eekhoff (Team DSM) tracked Van Aert but wasn't able to get close and had to settle for second, while Gonzalo Serrano (Movistar) claimed the final podium spot. 

Ethan Hayter (Ineos Grenadiers) trailed them to finish fourth, and there was a two-second gap to the next batch of riders, which included Alaphilippe, Giacomo Nizzolo (Qhubeka-NextHash), and Michael Woods (Israel Start-Up Nation). 

With 10 bonus seconds for the stage win, Van Aert pulls on the first navy leader's jersey with a gap of four seconds over Eekhoff, six over Serrano, 10 over Hayter, and 12 over the Alaphilippe group. 

How it unfolded

Through narrow roads and a thick Cornish drizzle, flanked by steep, grass banks and the huge crowds that appear whenever bike-racing comes to Britain, the race traversed the 180km from Penzance to Bodmin.

Despite a relatively fast neutral zone that strung out the peloton from the start, a five-man breakaway escaped, composed of Joey Rosskopf (Rally Cycling), Oliver Stockwell (Great Britain), Max Walker (TRINITY Racing) and the last two winners of the mountains classification- Jacob Scott (Canyon dhb SunGod) and Nic Dlamini (Team Qhubeka NextHash).

Content with this configuration, the WorldTour teams blocked the road and the familiar shapes of Tony Martin (Jumbo-Visma) and Tim Declercq (Deceuninck-Quickstep) surfaced from the depths of the peloton to control the race, allowing the breakaway a meagre three minutes lead. 

During their time out front, the breakaway contested the intermediate sprints and mountain points scattered across the jagged Cornish landscape, and Scott emerged victorious in both these competitions. He took the win on Zennor Hill, the first climb of the day, and, while Dlamini recovered from a dropped chain on this climb to take maximum mountain points at the second and third opportunities to do so, this was not enough to displace Scott. Scott won both intermediate sprints as well, to complete his near-perfect day out.

Soon after the final classified climb, the leading quintet became a trio as Rosskopf punctured and Dlamini looked to conserve energy for later in the week. Both were reabsorbed by the peloton 35 kilometres from the finish while their breakaway companions survived another ten kilometres before they too were caught.

On the approach to Bodmin, the WorldTour teams fought for control of the peloton, each deploying their star names as domestiques. André Greipel (Israel Start-Up Nation), Mark Cavendish (Deceuninck-Quickstep), Richie Porte (Ineos-Grenadiers) and Marc Soler (Movistar Team) in turn sat on the front of the race.

Deceuninck-Quickstep led the peloton into the town and, at the point where the road reared upwards in the final 500m, Alaphilippe attacked, though it was ultimately fruitless as Van Aert hunted him down to take the stage win. 

In the end, such was van Aert’s dominance, he was able to turn his head in the closing metres, and he crossed the line nonchalantly while, a bike length behind him, Eekhoff and Serrano gasped for air.