The first stage is a flat jaunt around the East of England. In fact it could hardly be anything else with a distinct lack of hills of any note in these parts. The money hungry tour though has scheduled an obscene amount of sprint hotspots and ludicriously categorised 'climbs' along the parcours.
We get three man who attack away early.
Gate (Cadburys), Teunissen (UPC) and Renang (Swedbank) are the trio who make the break of the day.
In results for the various sprint points (both climbs are 3rd cat(.
The sprinters teams and teams of GC hopefuls take no chances and chase this thing down. Notably Jaguar and Rothaus chasing for their British leaders.
The breakaway are caught and dropped.
Puncture nightmare as one British leader suffers a big blow on the opening stage as one of the two Manx missiles punctures - It's Kennaugh.
Vueling do not send anyone back, massive blow for a rider who would have expected a decent placing in the big sprint clash with Cavendish.
Cav's team Baltic sort out a sprint train with Briggs being the last lead out. SRAM provide competition.
SRAM have Keisse as the final lead out for Haussler, the German has Caldiera (Prio), Krasnov (Tink) and Nelson (Halfords) for company. Meanwhile on Cav's wheel is Drujon (Bpost), Ventoso (Prio) and Kreder (Swedbank).
Briggs manages to pull Cav level and when the gallop starts Haussler has nowhere near Cav's speed.
Cav drags Drujon and Ventoso to the line for the podium positions with Schinker (Kenya) a shock 4th over Haussler who completely misfired off the back of a decent train.
As has been typical of stage races this year we get a late split that causes major GC headaches.
Yes that is Froome (Jaguar) and Chaoufi (Kenya) who both carelessly lose 1.48.
