Denmark’s Tobias Lund Andresen yesterday upstaged a crack field of sprinters in a hectic finish to win the first stage of the Tour Down Under.
Andresen, riding for Decathlon CMA CGM, surged to the front in the main street of Tanunda, near Adelaide. The Dane held off storming finishes from England’s Matthew Brennan (Team Visma-Lease A Bike) and Australia’s Sam Welsford (Ineos Grenadiers) to take the 120.6km stage in the UCI World Tour season opener.
The 23-year-old leads by one second in the general classification over Tuesday’s Prologue winner Sam Watson (Ineos Grenadiers) with England’s Ethan Vernon (NSN Cycling Team) a further second behind in third.
Photo: AFP
It was Andresen’s first race with his new French team and timed his finish perfectly, coming off the wheel of Vernon and dashing clear while Brennan and Welsford had to angle their way through traffic.
“This is unbelievable, riding for the new team, the bike is so fast and my teammates did an incredible job,” Andresen said.
“You need to be a little bit stupid to be a sprinter and enjoy a finish like this and we did exactly what we wanted to do. It’s not often you can do what you want to do, but today we managed to pull it off,” he said.
Brennan, who enjoyed a stellar season last year, including stage wins in the Volta a Catalunya, Tour de Romandie and Tour of Poland, just edged out Welsford, who was bidding for his seventh stage win in the Tour Down Under.
“We kind of got a little bit swamped just on the finish. I got stuck in the barriers there and couldn’t really get out,” Welsford said. “I’m just kicking myself because I had to stop pedaling with 20m to the line. It is what it is.”
Defending champion Jhonatan Narvaez (UAE Team Emirates), who won an early intermediate sprint, finished 26th. Dutchman Max van der Meulen (Team Bahrain Victorious) suffered a heavy fall early in the stage and was taken to hospital for observation with the team reporting he was conscious.
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