Tour of Oman: Greipel wins stage 1

Andre Greipel (Lotto Belisol) came out on top on stage 1 of the Tour of Oman, with a powerful sprint to edge out Leigh Howard (Orica GreenEdge) and Nicola Ruffoni (Bardiani-CSF) on the road from As Suwayq Castle to Naseem Garden.

The German sprinter was led home by his Lotto Belisol team after a number of sprint teams vied for superiority in the closing kilometres of the race. Greipel now leads the race after picking up his fourth win of the 2014 season.

Greipel dedicated his stage victory to former teammate Oliver Kaisen, who recently retired due to a heart problem. He was clearly touched by what had happened to his Belgian teammate but was happy to have won after Lotto Belisol chased the break of the day and then produced a perfect lead out to out fox and out power Omega Pharma-Quick Step.

"I don't think any other team deserved the win like we did. We chased hard all day," Greipel said after pulling the race leader's jersey over his white German national champion's jersey.

Omega Pharma-Quick Step seemed in control of the sprint until mistakenly opening the door by moving from the barriers to the centre of the road. Lotto Belisol jumped at the chance to open up their lead out protected from the side wind.

"There was some shelter on the right and I think Sieberg went from twentieth wheel to the front and then held the speed really high. It was a slight head wind but we could still hold them off," Greipel explained.

It was Greipel's fourth win of the season and he had absolutely no qualms about taking advantage of OPQS's mistake.

"You can sprint or you can't sprint," he said bluntly. "That's cycling, otherwise, as I always say, we should play chess."

"I trust my guys 100% and they know what they have to do. Even if Quick Step didn't open on the right side, we could have passed them on the left. I stuck to the wheel of my teammate and we were not panicking. We had the horse power with a kilometre to go. When Sieberg started it was pretty amazing and fast. I think we deserved it."

The early part of the race was marked by a four-man group, which established a lead of close to five minutes in the opening kilometres.

One rider who missed the start was FDJ’s Thibaut Pinot, who pulled out ahead of the first stage due to a fever and sore throat.

There were no such problems for Preben Van Hecke, Jelle Wallays (both TSV), Nicola Boem (Bardiani-CSF) and Alessandro Bazzana (UnitedHealthCare), who after 10 kilometres of racing, had a lead of 4:50 over the peloton.

Van Hecke (TSV) was first at the top of Al Rustaq climb at 56.5km to claim the first KOM jersey of the race, with the peloton at 4:05.

Lotto was the first team to muster a chase with FDJ doing the same in order to help Nacer Bouhanni.

However, Greipel’s chances of victory were initially dented when he missed a split in the peloton after 142km of racing. With the bunch split the Lotto team were forced to chase in the crosswinds. The Belgian team made contact before the final 10km of racing but it was Belkin who controlled the field as they rode into the final 2,000 meters of the stage.

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