Giacomo Nizzolo of Trek Segafredo has won the opening stage of the Abu Dhabi Tour.
Among the starters were the Official Abu Dhabi Tour Ambassador, the Manxman Mark Cavendish, the Giro d’Italia winner Vincenzo Nibali (Italy), the seven-time overall Grand Tour winner Alberto Contador (Spain), the duo of puncheurs John Degenkolb (Germany) and Michael Matthews (Australia), the sprinter André Greipel (Germany), two gold medalists from Rio 2016, the Italian Elia Viviani (Omnium) and the Belgian Greg Van Avermaet (Individual Road Race), the Costa Rican rider Andrey Amador and the local hero Yousif Mirza, the highest profile rider in the UAE for this race which started with a 147km stage that started and finished in Madinat Zayed.
Four riders in Michael Matthews and Jens Keukeleire (Orica-BikeExchange), Gatis Smukulis (Astana), and Dion Smth (ONE Pro) got into a break and they were 3.30 ahead with 75kms left on a day where temperatures were around the 36 degrees mark.
Into the final fifty kilometres of the stage and the gap had dropped to under three minutes and twenty kilometres later, it was down to 1.52 to the peloton which did not included Sir Bradley Wiggins who did not start.
With 18.2kms left the quartet were 2.12 ahead and the gap was dropping all the time.
Keukeleire was pushing out 400 watts but it was having no effect as the peloton had reduced their lead to 28 seconds with 8.8kms left.
Keukeleire was the last man standing but he was caught with seven kilometres left and Nicholas Roche in his last race for Team Sky was amongst the front runners.
Mark Cavendish was brought up by his Dimension Data team as was Greg Van Avermaet of BMC whilst Team Sky and ONE Pro were handily placed going under the flam rouge.
The sprint was miss-timed by a number of riders and it was Trek Segafredo's Giacomo Nizzolo who took the sprint in 3.15.19 ahead of John Degenkolb and Mark Cavendish. Team Wiggins Chris Latham was fifth.
"It was a very long sprint and very fast," said Nizzolo to Daniel Lloyd. "I am really happy.
"I said I would go for one more victory and that is a great way to start. When I saw the gap I decided to put a man in front and I went for it. I thank my team for all their support."
Jens Keukeleire who leads the sprint competition said: "I was surprised how the break happened. I thought lets give it a crack. It was good and I had fun out there.
"We knew it was going to be hard to stay away but we got unlucky when the headwind got up and the energy went out of our legs."
Picture copyright of Abu Dhabi Tour