Andrea Guardini of Astana has won the opening stage of the World Ports Classic race.
This race from Rotterdam to Antwerp and back started with a 195km stage from Rotterdam and attracted a strong field for this UCI European Tour race, organised by Tour De France organisers ASO.
On roads that will be used on stage two of the 2015 Tour De France which starts in Utrecht in July, Andreas Stauff, Jelle Wallays, Wesley Kreder, Baptiste Planckaert and Ronan Van Zandbeek formed a break and were 2.20 ahead after fifty five kilometres.
Wallays took the Sprint de Neeltje Jans after 73.5kms with an average speed of 48kmh for the first two hours.
The riders went through the feedzone at Middelburg in the rain as the lead dropped to 1.45 due to the wind which was now blowing across the escapers and the peloton led by Lotto Soudal.
With €3,060 on the line for the winner of the stage plus the blue jersey, the escapers were caught and Tleubayev and Mol had a nineteen second lead with 20 km to go.
The gap briefly went out to thirty five seconds but was down to twelve seconds going into the final three kilometres with the peloton closing in fast.
With 1.3kms to go, Tleubayev and Mol were swept up and the sprint was on.
Lotto Soudal moved their sprint train to the front but it was Andrea Guardini who won the opening stage ahead of Yauheni Hutarovich of Bretagane Seche Enviroment, Kris Boeckmans of Lotto Soudal, Barry Markus of LottoNL-Jumbo and Dylan Groenewegen of Roompot with Irishman Sam Bennett of Bora Argon 18 in tenth place.