The first stage of the Tour of South Africa takes us from Roma to Maseru. It's a hilly stage, but honestly, nothing too special. Favourites will probably wait until the final climb to show themselves. Afterwards, there's still around 500 metres slightly downhill for the best climbers to find out who takes the bonification seconds and the stage win.
The bookies mark Kinoshita as the big favourite, ahead of Flügel and Froome. Though Schreurs and Ulissi shouldn't be ruled out either, due to the downhill final sprint.
A high pace in the peloton so far, and it took a while for any rider to even attempt to get into a break. After 20 kilometres, only Reckweg attempted to get away, with Buckosky following him a few kilometres later, certainly hoping for more assistance in the near future. For now though, Reckweg takes up the first intermediate sprint, in front of Buckoscky and pack leader Rabitsch.
Reckweg takes the first KoM sprint in front of a rapidly nearing Buckoscky. Two minutes on the peloton already. WCC is leading the chase, which means Vandousselaere is scoring the final KoM point.
Reckweg easily wins the seond KoM sprint, the only cat 3 one in this stage. Buckoscky 2nd, Nonaka third from the pack.
Buckoscky now needs to win the final two KoM climbs to tie Reckweg. And he wins the first...
And the second one, too! We'll have to see how the race organisers will handle this tiebreaker.
Nonaka and Kung take the final points from each climb, respectively.
Good work from Repsol, WCC and Meiji means the breakaway easily gets caught. 40 kilometres to go.
The final intermediate sprint was won by Sweeting, the only one who seemed to care. Nonaka (what a super domestique!) and Agostini take second and third.
5 kilometres to go, and as predicted, all will happen on the final climb. Bille is leading the pack, but WCC is still present as ever – is Betancourt feeling good?
We're now onto the final climb, with two kilometres to go. WCC's teammates have faded away, and it's now Repsol, with Duchesne leading out Bystrom. Behind them, it's Flügel, Ignatiev, Bille, Ulissi and Kinoshita. It's looking like this will become some sort of uphill sprint!
Some of the riders positioned worse are the Scheurs-Klemme and Pichon-Dowsett duos. Also no surprises are likely from Roux and Juul-Jensen. They will either have to make up a lot of room, or hope for no time gaps at the finish.
Duschesne drops and Bystrom tries a very long sprint! Flügel, Kinoshita and Thomson(!) are behind him.
1 kilometre to go, and the first three names have a gap. And look who are storming up behind: Klemme and Roux! Roche is also trying to hold their wheel. Looks like he will sprint instead of his leader Froome.
Ulissi storms up, and is already closing in on 4th with 600 metres to go. Too late or did he time his jump perfectly?
Far too late, actually! Sven Erik Bystrom takes the first stage of the Tour of South Africa. He wasn't the biggest favourite, but especially the great leadout by Duschesne gave him an edge above the rest.
Flügel, Kinoshita and Ulissi take the next spots. They'll all be okay with their position, but losing against Bystrom is something that will make them scratch their head a little.
Roux finishes 5th after a great comeback. Roche, Klemme, Dowsett, Pichon and, quite surprisingly, Kossouhorou complete the top 10.
Schreurs with a quite disappointing 20th place. Froome (23rd) and Costa (34th) are in the background, even further back. But no time gaps means they were allowed to have an off-day.
And that's it for day one of the Tour of South Africa! Sadly the game crashed when loading the podium, and I had no idea how to recover the results at the time of writing. So no full results yet. But in the shortened results, we can see that Buckosky will wear the KoM jersey tomorrow, while Daniel Paulus was the best U25 rider. See you tomorrow!
Tour of South Africa – Stage 1
