The UCI World Champion Peter Sagan returned to winning ways on the opening stage of the Tour de Pologne today in Krakow following on from his expulsion from the Tour de France. His win came after an early breakaway was reeled in on the final laps of a finishing circuit with Sagan’s BORA – hansgrohe team taking control at the front of the peloton to help close the gap.

The 74th edition of the Tour de Pologne started today with a 130km long stage with start and finish in one of Europe´s biggest main squares in Krakow city centre. After 120km of hilly racing, the peloton returned to Krakow for three final circuits of four kilometres.

Four riders – Maciej Paterski (CCC-Sprandi), Pawel Bernas (Poland), Martijn Keizer (LottoNL-Jumbo) and Charles Planet (Novo Nordisk) – made it into the break and had soon an advantage of more than 3 minutes to the peloton. With about 60 kilometres remaining, the peloton started to work to close the gap. The gap dropped steadily and with 20 kilometres to go the breakaway was nearly caught.

On the final laps in the city centre of Krakow, the sprinters teams started to form their lead-out trains. A crash in the finishing straight caused problems for some sprinters, but Sagan avoided the pile-up to sprint home ahead of Caleb Ewan (Orica-Scott) and Danny Van Poppel (Team Sky).

©BORA-hansgrohe / Stiehl Photography

After the stage Sagan was really happy about his victory, “I’m so happy to be back racing with a victory that follows my latest stage win a few weeks ago. I’d like to thank my teammates for their great work today, it was textbook performance and we scored an important win.

“Special thanks should also go to the entire team, BORA-hansgrohe, its manager Ralph Denk and all the sponsors, in particular, BORA, hansgrohe and Specialized, that supported me after the setback at the Tour de France. The past is now behind us and we are fully focused on racing at the Tour de Pologne, but first we celebrate today’s victory.”

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