Deutschland Tour 2024 Stage 1

August 22, 2024 Stage 1 sends the riders South West, leaving Schweinfurt, heading towards the wine region along the Nekar River in Heilbronn. An all German break went up the road on a lumpy route with 2,200M of climbing including Anton Lennemann of Bike Aid, Nick Bangert, Ben Felix Jochum of Lotto Kern-Haus. Lidl-Trek kept the break relatively close at around 3 minutes with 77KM to go. Bangert, the Heilbronn local 19 year old, went solo with 30KM to go. He put up a good fight and made it into his hometown before being caught just under 16KM to go. The route swung out of town up a steep road through the vineyards. Visma-Lease a Bike set a very hard pace and three riders got away over the top, Archie Ryan of EF-Education EasyPost, Thomas Gloag of Visma-Lease a Bike, and Tobias Johannessen of Uno-X Mobility. The race was completely strung out with 8KM to go as riders were scrambling to stay in the peloton while others were desperately trying to catch the three leaders. The leaders were brought back at 6KM to go by a group of 30 but there was no organization and attacks continued. The rest of the bunch caught on with 4KM to go and things settled into sprint formation. Lidl-Trek took over at 800M from the line with the few men they had left. Mads Pedersen dropped Jonathan Milan off perfectly with 175M to the line. No one could touch Milan in the sprint. The Italian won by more than two bike lengths in the end. Jordi Meeus of Redbull-Bora Hansgrohe was second best with Max Kanter of Astana in third.