Caleb Ewan wins the opening stage of Saudi Tour

On the opening day of the Saudi Tour, Lotto Soudal have taken a dominant win in the bunch sprint as Caleb Ewan soared to the finish line unchallenged, in what is the Belgian team's third win of the season.

“Of course, I am super happy to start the year this way but I am even more impressed by how the team worked for me today." Ewan said, as he recovered from his effort.

The five-day long race in Saudi Arabia began today with a seemingly harmless stage that had it's start and finale in Winter Park, in the northeast part of the country. Martin Urianstad (Uno-X Pro Cycling Team), Polychronis Tzortzakis (Kuwait Pro Cycling Team) and Mohd Shahrul Mat Amin (Terengganu Polygon Cycling Team) launched their move early and made the breakaway of the day. The gap never grew out a lot as the peloton, led by stage favourites' teams Lotto Soudal and Team Bike ExChange - Jayco, managed it always around and below the 3 minute mark.

Despite it's straightforward and easy to tackle roads, the stage did cross a small unpaved section. Albeit not very trecherous, pre-race favourites Matteo Fabro and Andrea Bagioli both hit the deck and lost over 13 and 19 minutes respectively, falling out of contention. Rui Costa, another pre-race favourite, took advantage of the early lack of a breakaway to capture 3 seconds of bonifications in an early intermediate sprint.

The day soon came down to a mass sprint, where Lotto Soudal confortably managed to take the helm of the peloton and with a brilliant leadout by Jasper De Buyst, Caleb Ewan (Lotto Soudal) only came out of the wheel with 100 meters to go where in his classical aerodynamical position he took the win by over a bike lenght. Martin Laas (BORA-hansgrohe) and Fernando Gaviria (UAE Team Emirates) wrapped up the podium, whilst Dylan Groenewegen (Team BikeExchange - Jayco) settled with a modest 12th place as he seemingly struggled with positioning.

"They just did the perfect job. The gravel section at twenty kilometres from the finished caused some chaos and crashes, but my teammates always made sure I was right at the front of the bunch leading into that sector and that way, they kept me out of the danger zone. Afterwards, they delivered me towards the finish line just perfectly. I only had to sprint for a 100 metres. That is why this victory is one of the entire Lotto Soudal team," affirmed Ewan.

Tristan Hoffman, Team BikeExchange's DS stated after the stage, "We were hoping for more because that's not his place, he should be competitive for the win. I need to talk to the riders to see what happened, we need to learn from it and take the next step. I think the boys are in a good shape, we will discuss now after the race what we can do better, and then we see what we can do tomorrow."

There will be another pair of sprint stages later on in the race, but tomorrow the puncheurs will will have a big opportunity to take a win, as the riders go up to Abu Rakah for the race's sole summit finish. Caleb Ewan departs with the leader's jersey and will attempt to defend it.