No fairy-tale finish to inaugural Copenhagen Sprint as Mads Pedersen is denied victory by in-form Jordi Meeus

Red Bull - BORA - hansgrohe's Jordi Meeus has stormed to the victory at the first ever edition of the men's Copenhagen Sprint, denying Mads Pedersen a fairy-tale victory in his homeland.

Heading into the final 90km of the day, five riders were out ahead of the peloton, with two of the Danish national team joined by Jensen Plowright (Alpecin - Deceuninck), Victor Vercouillie (Team Flanders - Baloise) and George Jackson (Burgos Burpellet BH). Before long though, Jackson had dropped back, leaving just four riders at the front.

By 30km to go, the break had been restored to five strong, thanks to counter moves by Daan Hoole and Cedric Beullens. With the peloton lurking dangerously around 25 seconds behind however, the break's hopes of a win weren't looking good.

As the lead group took the bell for the final lap of the finishing circuit with 10km to go, the breakaway's advantage over the peloton was still 20 seconds. As a massive crash in the peloton saw almost half the main bunch slowed up, the powers of the chase were then diminished too, and the time gap started to go out again ever so slightly as a result. Notably, among those caught up in the aforementioned crash was Team Visma | Lease a Bike's Olav Kooij.

Finally though, with around 1.4km to go the break were caught. Then it was all about the sprint for the line and in that finale, Dylan Groenewegen opened things up, but at the line it was Jordi Meeus who emerged victorious, taking his second win of the week ahead of Alexis Renard and Emilien Jeannière.