Søren Wærenskjold (Uno-X Mobility) won stage 2 of the Tour of Denmark after a hectic sprint into Gladsaxe, timing his sprint perfectly to power to a third victory of the season.
Young Belgian sprinter Steffen De Schuyteneer (Lotto) took an impressive second place, closely followed by Axel Zingle (Visma-Lease a Bike) in third and Jasper Philipsen (Alpecin-Deceuninck) in fourth, in the Belgian's first race since crashing heavily out of the Tour de France.
Race leader Mads Pedersen (Lidl-Trek) only managed ninth in the sprint finish, after one of his lead-out men, Ryan Gibbons, crashed in the run-in, and was washed away in the wheels as the speed ramped up for the final charge to the line.
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Despite gaining no bonus seconds, he nonetheless holds onto the blue jersey, with the stage 3 time trial out and back from Kerteminde on Thursday set to play a big role in deciding the overall GC standings.
"I had completely different legs today. Both my body and legs worked much better," said Wærenskjold.
"It was chaotic in the final. We had Rasmus in the breakaway, but unfortunately, they didn't get much time. Then I saw my opportunity.
"We tried to position ourselves well. We were a little further ahead than we had planned, with 700 m left. It was better to be further ahead than too far behind."
Racing headed to Zealand for stage 2 of the Tour of Denmark, with a seven-rider breakaway establishing itself in the first 20km of the stage, heading away from Rødovre just west of Copenhagen.
It was made up of six Danes: Rasmus Bøgh Wallin (Uno-X Mobility), Sebastian Nielsen (Unibet Tietema Rockets), Boas Lysgaard (BHS-PL Beton Bornholm), Mads Andersen, Matias Malmberg (AIRTOX-Carl Ras) and Magnus Machholdt (Give Steel-2M Cycling Elite), and one French rider – Anton Muller (Novo Nordisk).
With an almost completely flat stage on offer, except for two small climbs shorter than 300 metres, the riders in front were only afforded a small lead, with the sprint-focussed teams controlling on the front.
Muller dropped out of the break due to a crash, leaving only six in front, and they led into the final 16km of the stage and local laps around the finish location of Gladsaxe with a 30-second lead.
The last remnants of the break, Wallin and Malmberg, led into the final lap with a small lead, but a crash in the peloton disrupted the chasing peloton, with around 10 riders, including green jersey Julius Johansen (Denmark), hitting the deck.
The break was finally caught with 3km to go, after which several teams took over to try and control the sprint finale. Lotto, Alpecin-Deceuninck and Lidl-Trek all tried to position their leaders, but it was Uno-X Mobility who found themself in the perfect position to take the win.
A late solo move from Daniel Stampe (BHS-PL Beton Bornholm) was followed by Nils Eekhoff (Picnic PostNL), which opened up the sprint, with Wærenskjold slingshotting out of his slipstream to charge to the victory.
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