Renewi Tour 2024 Stage 1

August 28, 2024 There is a stacked sprint field in this edition of the Renewi Tour. The fast men wouldn't have to wait long before they got their first chance to shine as Stage 1 was flat and positioned to be a sprint. This race also has the fan favorite Green (Golden) Kilometer which could be decisive in the final GC. Cériel Desal and Loïc Vliegen of Bingoal-WB, Lars Craps of Flanders-Baloise, and Axel Huens and Jordy Bouts of TDT-Unibet went up the road and had 1 minute 40 seconds with 67KM to go. The break gobbled up the Green Kilometer bonus seconds with just over 30KM to go, leaving nothing for the the would-be GC favorites. Their lead was down to just a few seconds with 18KM to go as the sprint trains were forming and they were caught shortly after. The final was hectic with all of the top sprint teams fighting for every inch. Jayco AlUla was first through final 160 degree left turn at 900M to go. Mathieu van der Poel of Alpecin-Deceuninck took the bunch from 700M to 225M. Jonathan Milan of Lidl-Trek sent his sprint and simply had the strongest legs. Jasper Philipsen of Alpecin-Deceuninck tried to get around but was nearly a full bike length behind with Axel Zingle of Cofidis taking third. Tim Merlier of Soudal Quickstep threw his bike at the line for fourth place but it went slightly to the right and hit Dylan Groenewegen of Jayco AlUla. The pair went down at full speed with Groenewegen looking worse off. Groenewegen was given fourth place after the official relegation of Merlier.