Bryan Coquard sprinted to victory on stage one of the Région Pays de la Loire Tour on a flat day's racing in France.
The first stage of the 69th Région Pays de la Loire Tour, an almost dead flat, 151km course from Saint-Père-en-Retz to Saint-Gilles-Croix-de-Vie seemed ideal for the pelotons sprint finishers. The trio of Valentin Ferron (TotalEnergies), Johan Meens (Bingoal WB) and Maël Guégan (CIC U Nantes Atlantique) tried their luck in the break.
With just 23km to go, the breakaway still had a lead of just over a minute as Maël Guégan led the race over the king of the mountains and secured himself four points.EF Education-EasyPost were pulling the peloton, powered by a returning Michael Valgren and the breakaway's time gap began tumbling. With the peloton mere seconds away from the lead group, Valentin Ferron made one last effort to try and spring a surprise with 5km to go.
With the former Critérium du Dauphiné stage winner acting as a carrot, dangling in front of a ravenous peloton, Ferron was finally brought back by the bunch just 2.6km away from what would have been an incredible victory.
A crash in the peloton then saw a number of riders go down before the remaining sprint trains took hold with Bryan Coquard winning ahead of Marijn Van Den Berg and Manuel Penalver.
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