Danny van Poppel wins Volta a la Comunitat Valenciana opener

Danny van Poppel sprinted to victory on the opening stage of the Volta a la Comunitat Valenciana to get his 2018 season off to a flying start with his new team LottoNL-Jumbo.

The Dutchman, who moved from Team Sky in the off-season, beat Luka Mezgec (Mitchelton-Scott) to the line in Peñiscola, with Jurgen Roelandts (BMC Racing) finishing a more distant third.

Van Poppel's new teammates shouldered more than their fair share of responsibility on the largely flat 191km stage, helping to catch the day's breakaway before amassing at the front of the peloton in the closing kilometres.

They had to burn a couple of extra matches when a crash involving EF-Drapac’s Sacha Modolo and Tom Van Asbroeck caused a split and left Team Sky's Gianni Moscon out front with a small margin in the last couple of kilometres. Moscon went all in but was caught with several hundred metres to go, leaving LottoNL's final lead-out man with just a few more pedal strokes before letting Van Poppel emerge from the slipstream.

When he did, he produced a powerful surge to which only Mezgec – Mitchelton-Scott's chosen sprinter here as Matteo Trentin returns from injury – could respond. The Slovenian champion came back towards the line but never looked like overhauling Van Poppel.

Behind them, Roelandts held on for third place on his BMC debut, just ahead of Dan McLay, who was making up considerable ground having started his sprint some way back on his own debut for EF-Drapac.

"It's my first race and first win, so it's very nice," Van Poppel told Eurosport in the post-race interview.

"The team did a great job, pulled all day and did a perfect lead-out. I was nervous because it's a new race and a new team, but I'm super happy I took the win here."

How it unfolded

The opening stage of the Volta, now in its third year since its revival, was always likely to culminate in a bunch gallop, with just one categorised climb on the 191km route from Oropesa El Mar to Peñiscola.

The second-category ascent of La Bandereta topped out just shy of the half-way mark, giving the sprinters' teams ample ground to keep any breakaway efforts under control.

That didn't deter some of the riders from the smaller teams, with a four-man breakaway going clear in the early kilometres. In there was 41-year-old Paco Mancebo, now riding for Dominican Republic-based team, Inteja DCT, 20 years since he turned pro. The Spanish veteran was joined by Jose Manuel Diaz (Israel Cycling Academy), Ibai Salas (Burgos BH) and Paul Ourselin (Direct Energie).

The quartet quickly established a sizeable lead, with five minutes after 65km of racing. The gap started to come down on the approach to La Bandereta and by the top – where Salas claimed maximum KOM points – it was down to three minutes.

The race continued to head north, just in from the coast, with the roads dipping gently downhill and allowing the peloton to control the gap with ease. Alongside LottoNL-Jumbo, it was EF-Drapac, Movistar, and Euskadi-Murias up near the front, and the increase in tempo in the final hour spelled the end for the break.

The catch was made with 17km to go, leaving a long run-in for the sprint trains. Team Sky ruffled LottoNL's feathers when they appeared at the front but were almost rewarded when that late crash left Moscon with an unlikely opportunity.

The headwind blowing up the coast, however, put paid to the Italian hopes, and it was the former Sky man Van Poppel who began the latest chapter of his career with a bang.

The Volta a la Comunitat Valenciana continues on Thursday with a hilly stage that should make for an action-packed finale.

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