Lampre-Merida's Diego Ulissi won the opening stage of the 70th Tour Of Poland this afternoon.
For the first time in its history, the race moved outside of Polish soil and started in the Italian Dolomites at Roverto for a 184.5km stage to a summit finish at Madonna di Campiglio and attracted some big names including Giro D'Italia winner Vincenzo Nibali and 2012 Tour De France winner Sir Bradley Wiggins as well as the likes of Fabian Cancellera,
This was a stage which had time bonuses for mountains and saw Bartosz Huzarski (Team NetApp-Endura), Serge Pauwels (Omega Pharma-QuickStep), Marco Pinotti (BMC) and Cédric Pineau (FDJ) get away early building a nine minute lead.
They stayed away until the lower slopes of the the category one Madonna di Campiglio climb when after Pauwels had attacked Huzarski, who had taken the first two climbs of the day and a sprint, the pair were swept up.
Other attacks all failed until Orica Green-Edge's Pieter Weening got clear and had a 32 second lead with six kilometres to go.
He was caught just before the King Of The Mountains climb on the Di Campiglio, with 2.6kms to go by Eros Capecchi and Chris Anker Sorensen who took the points.
Weening tried to get away again but was caught with 300m to go and this made for a bunch sprint which Lampre-Merida's Diego Ulissi won in a time of 4.59.32 to give him the leader's jersey.
Darwin Atapuma of the Colombia team was second with Poiish rider Rafal Majka third, Movistar's Eros Capecchi fourth and Cannondale's Ivan Basso in fifth.
Bradley Wiggins finished 58th and Ben Swift was 59th with Vincenzo Nibali 60th, some 9 minutes and thirteen seconds down on the time of Ulissi.
With time bonuses, Ullissi now leads the race from Chris Anker Sörensen with the pair having the same time. Darwin Atapuma is four seconds back with Rafal Majka six seconds back.