Harry Tanfield (Canyon-Eisberg) caused a major upset on Stage one of the Tour de Yorkshire winning the sprint ahed of his fellow breakaway riders.
The group of five were all part of the days main escape and managed to hold off the rampaging peloton behind. Ali Slater (JLT Condor) rode in second while Michael Cuming (Madison Genesis) took third.
The day's breakaway of six riders also swept up the KOM points and sprint points along the way shard amongst Cuming and Tanfield respectively.
The tale of the stage
Stage one of the 2018 men's Tour de Yorkshire took the riders on a 182km ride round of East Yorkshire from Beverley to Doncaster.
The day was largely flat suiting itself the fastmen. En route there was only one climb, the Cote de Baggaby Hill.
Soon after the start of the stage, a group of six went clear of the main peloton consisting of five Continental riders and one ProContinental rider. Among those away was track World Champion Harry Tanfield.
The group of hopefuls managed to establish a solid lead that stretched to over six minutes at points with the bunch behind settling into a steady pace.
The only mountain points of the day went to Mike Cumming (Madison Genesis) who managed to get the jump on Tom Baylis (One Pro Cycling). The sprint was taken by Tanfield who was tempted to go solo but had second thoughts.
Back in the bunch, Dimension Data was doing much of the pace setting for sprinter Mark Cavendish with Team Sky lurking just behind.
Being such a flat stage and with so many WorldTour teams interested in a sprint finish, very little happened for large parts of the race. As the riders approached 50km it was more of the same as the peloton and break battled into a headwind.
As we slipped underneath the 40km to go marker, the gap was reduced to under three minutes. Meanwhile, Ned Boulting told an anecdote about the russet apple, such was the excitement on the road.
The gap fell to underneath two minutes which prompted the attack of Baylis which was quickly marked by Tanfield. With 20km, the six of them came together and persisted to push on with the gap remaining steady.
With 10km to go, Ian Stannard (Team Sky) drove the pace with help from Dimension Data, Team Sunweb and Euskadi-Murias fearing that the break may never come back.