Luka Mezgec of Giant Shimano has won the opening stage of the Tour of Beijing.
The final race on the UCI World Tour 2014 calendar started with a 167km stage from Chongll to Zhangjiakou.
Tosh Van de Sande (Lotto-Belisol), Julien Kern of AG2R and Jeremy Roy of FDJ were the first to escape and they had a five minute lead after twelve kilometres which went out to over eight minutes.
Team Sky and Orica Green Edge pulled them back to 3.36 as the front three carved up all the sprint points and the King Of The Mountains, with Kern taking the KOM's and Van de Sande and Roy taking the sprints.
Roy took that final sprint with 43kms to go with Van de Sande by now having dropped off the pace.
Roy went off on his own whilst 1.30 down the road, BMC's Philippe Gilbert went after him.
Gilbert was brought back by the peloton who were charging after Roy with 32kms to go.
Roy was caught with twenty kilometres remaining and Team Sky continued to stay on the front. However, their sprint man - Luke Rowe was in the pack on the final corner and it was Garmin's Steele von Hoff who started the sprint. However, up came Luka Megec and the Giant Shimano rider won in 4.22.58 ahead of Caleb Ewan of Orica Green Edge, Tyler Farrar, Sacha Modolo, Nikolas Maes, followed by Hofland, Von Hoff, Boy Van Poppel, Davide Appollonio and Olivier Le Gac.
Megec told the Giant Shimano Press Office: "I suffered today as it was constantly up and down and the race was at quite high altitude for a long time.
"The team was strong in helping control early on and then keeping me in position when it was hard, keeping me fresher for the finish.
"The plan was to stick me in the right wheel at the front in the final few kilometres and this worked perfectly. It's great to win again here in Beijing and hopefully we can continue this week with other opportunities for us. It will be hard to defend the overall in the next few days before the mountain stage but we will see tomorrow how it is."