Vuelta a San Juan: Gaviria wins stage 1

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For the third year running Fernando Gaviria (Quick-Step Floors) has opened his season with victory in Argentina, besting Italy's Elia Viviani in a sprint finish into San Juan. The Colombian delivered on his favourite status after his team took control inside the final kilometres of the race and Tom Boonen did the lead out duties

The flat stage 142.5km stage, starting and finishing in the city of San Juan, seemed straight forward on paper and that's how it played out for the most part, but the race was plunged into chaos in the final couple of kilometres as half of the peloton took a wrong turn.

"Half of the bunch to the right, and the other half to the left," Darwin Atapuma, in the wrong group, told Cyclingnews on the finish line. "The first group saw there was space on the right, and went that way, but they then indicated for riders to go left."

Riders scrambled to get back on course and a fragmented and confused peloton crossed the line. The race jury decided that all riders would be awarded the same time.

Despite the chaos, Gaviria rode on to take a commanding victory. Before the race there were question marks over leadership at the QuickStep team, with Tom Boonen stating his desire to get a result and get the ball rolling in the final season of his career.

After today the directeurs sportifs will find it tough to remove him from the role of leadout man, which he performed so well as QuickStep predictably dominated the final kilometre, with Maximiliano Richeze the last man before Boonen. There are four more sprint stages left in the remaining six stages of the race and Gaviria looks set to add to his tally, while it remains to be seen whether he'll repay the favour to Boonen later on.

How it unfolded

The 35th Vuelta a San Juan, the first time the race has been run with UCI 2.1 status and an array of stars from the international peloton, is featuring late starts to lessen the impact of the sun at the height of the South American summer.

Riders rolled out from beside San Juan's Plaza de Mayo at around 16:15, with the local crowds out in force, true to the race's claims that cycling is a passion in this region of Argentina.

A breakaway, predictably crammed with South American Continental riders was allowed to get away and they were kept on a leash of around one-and-a-half minutes pretty much all day.

The six in the break were: Ruben Ramos (Agentina), Gastón Javier (Sep-San Juan), Omar Azzem (Los Cascos Esco-Agropla), Leonardo Rodríguez (Asociacion Civil Mardan), Eugenio Alafaci (Trek-Segafredo), and Franco López (Agrupación Virgen de Fátima).

Lopez was clearly in the mood for a jersey and was first across the third-category KOM point after 36km, and again at both of the intermediate sprints, after 53 and 121km respectively.

They were brought back without issue in time for the sprint, but not before the episode of chaos – not that Gaviria was looking back.

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