Kooij off to a flying start! Dutchman wins opening stage in Poland with powerful sprint after excellent lead-out from Brennan

A new week also marked the start of the Tour of Poland on Monday. Shortly after noon, the riders set off from Wroclaw for the opening stage to Legnica. The stage was just under 200 kilometers and had a virtually flat profile. That's why it was expected that one of the sprinters would take the first leader's jersey.

Initially, four riders broke away, but Nadav Raisberg (Israel-Premier Tech) soon had to let his fellow escapees go. This left Lars Boven (Alpecin-Deceuninck), Donavan Grondin (Arkéa-B&B Hotels) and Patryk Stosz (Polish selection) at the front. The trio gained a few minutes' lead over the peloton, where we saw a moment of panic when a dog appeared on the course.

The first stage of the Tour of Poland was far from spectacular. Unfortunately, there was another crash in the peloton, but fortunately, there was no serious damage. Grondin had to change bikes in the leading group, but the Frenchman quickly returned to the front.

Little by little, the peloton closed in, and the leaders saw their lead steadily decrease. With just over 60 kilometers to go, the gap was only half a minute, which meant that the early breakaway would be caught well before the finish. That would eventually happen 38 kilometers from the finish line.

In the final, we got the only mountain sprint of the day on top of a 1.3-kilometer road with a 1.6% (!) gradient. In this way, the organization wanted to award a mountain jersey on the first day, and that was an opportunity that Bauke Mollema made good use of. The Dutch rider from Lidl-Trek accelerated just ahead of the peloton and secured the mountain jersey on Tuesday.

Slowly but surely, the finish line came into view, and the peloton became more and more nervous. We rode at full speed into the city of Legnica, where the finish line would ultimately be located. We almost saw crashes in a very turbulent peloton, which also included a clever maneuver by a rider between traffic cones.

Unfortunately, with 1.7 kilometers to go, we saw a crash involving about five riders. Nevertheless, the sprint went ahead, with Brennan as the last lead-out man for Kooij. The lead-out train of the Dutch formation did not go entirely smoothly, but the Brit launched his Dutch sprinter, who accelerated with a very impressive sprint to victory. This means that the first leader's jersey also goes to the Dutchman.