Greig Leach

Once the peloton had done it's job and sucked up all of the aggressive breaks since the top of the final climb, it was up to the sprinter's teams to get their man in the right position. It should make for interesting atypical sprints with most of the marquee names skipping this race in favor of yesterday's Milan-San Remo. Plus this stage race features quite a number of tough climbs and two mountain top finishes, not exactly the terrain of the speeders of the final kilometer. So it was Giant Shimano and Orica GreenEdge bringing their sprinters, Luka Mezgec and Leigh Howard to the final meters to fight it out. Today the race was Luka's and the win on the first stage puts him into the leader's jersey for the next stage of the Volta Catalunya.