Cardoso wins opening stage at Vuelta a Castilla y Leon

Manuel Cardoso (Caja Rural) won the 159.2km opening stage of the Vuelta a Castilla y Leon today and has earned the three-day stage race's first leader's jersey.

In the field sprint finale in Salamanca, Cardoso outkicked Enrique Sanz (Movistar) and Francisco Pachecho (Gios Deyser - Leon Kastro) to notch his first win of the season. With the time bonuses awarded at the finish Cardoso leads Sanz by four seconds on general classification while Pachecho holds third at six seconds.

The stage was dominated by a four-man break which formed after 57km of racing. The escape was comprised of Sergey Shilov (Lokosphinx), Walter Pedraza (EPM-Une), Alexander Wetterhall (Endura Racing) and Romain Zingle (Cofidis, Le Credit En Ligne) and the quartet reached a maximum advantage of seven minutes. Rabobank did the bulk of the work in reeling in the breakaway, which was ultimately neutralised inside of five kilometres remaining to the finish.

Zingle made the most of his stint off the front by being the first to top the day's only categorised climb, the category 3 Alto de Tres Rayas at 98.3km, thus earning the Belgian the mountains classification jersey.

The Vuelta a Castilla y Leon continues on Saturday with a 158.7km stage starting and finishing in Avila, featuring four category two climbs on the parcours.