Tour of California: Peter Sagan wins stage 1

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Peter Sagan (Bora-Hansgrohe) roared back into form with victory on stage 1 of the Tour of California in Sacramento. The three-time world champion had not won since the Tour Down Under in January, and was off the boil during the spring Classics before taking a break and preparing for this race.

His sprint on stage 1 was near faultless, especially given the lack of teammates he had around him in the final before the Bora team leader beat Travis McCabe (USA National Team) and Max Walscheid (Team Sunweb) to the line. The win marked Sagan's 17th stage victory at the Tour of Califiornia, and rewarded him with the leader's jersey ahead of stage 2.

Sagan used his bike-handling skills in a tense but wide-open sprint, first latching onto his rivals' sprint trains, and ensuring that he made the cut after the bunch had split just after the final kilometre. He jumped onto the lead-out from Team Ineos before powering to the right and opening up a significant gap. McCabe came back at the Bora-Hansgrohe rider in the closing metres, but he was unable to pull off what would have been a significant coup. Walscheid had a strong lead-out train in the closing kilometres, but he was left with too much ground to make up after Sagan launched his sprint.

The Deceuninck-QuickStep team had the numbers in the lead group, but they fluffed their lines with lead-out man Michael Mørkøv left responsible for his team. The Dane could only manage fifth, with John Degenkolb (Trek-Segafredo) and Phil Bauhaus (Bahrain-Merida) also making it inside the top 10.

How it unfolded

The pancake flat stage from Sacramento was akin to a criterium with three finishing circuits downtown always destined to decide the stage and the first leader of this year's Tour of California.

There was still time for the customary breakaway, this time featuring Laurens De Vreese (Astana), Michael Schar (CCC Team), Charles Planet (Novo Nordisk) and Tyler Stites (USA National Team). However, the terrain hardly favoured the brave, and the leading four riders were never able to establish a lead of over two minutes.

With 90km to go Deceuninck-QuickStep, Dimension Data – on behalf of Mark Cavendish – and Sagan's Bora-Hansgrohe team controlled the pace, but when the gap to the break dropped to just over a minute, the outcome of the stage was relatively clear. Stites did enough to win the first intermediate sprint, but when De Vreese sat up soon afterwards, only three opportunists remained.

When Schar followed suit just a few kilometres later, the writing was on the wall, with Dimension Data upping the pace at the front of the bunch. Two quickly became one, with Planet seemingly the only rider with the luxury of a gravitational pull towards the finish. However, even that couldn't help the Frenchman, who was caught 19km from the line.

The only flurry of action from the GC riders came when George Bennett (Jumbo-Visma) picked up a one-second bonus at the last intermediate sprint thanks to some canny riding, but from there the sprinters' teams wrestled complete control.

Katusha-Alpecin, Bahrain-Merida and Jumbo-Visma all attempted to usher their sprinters to the front, but when Sagan began to move up, the pattern for the finale began to unfold. He was one of the last riders to make the cut when the bunch briefly split, but he turned that fortune into his first win in almost four months.

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