RadioShack’s Robbie Hunter started the Tour of Austria off perfectly for the American team by sprinting to victory in the race’s opening stage. The South African powered to the finish line in Götzis ahead of Team Sky’s Christopher Sutton and Androni Giocattoli’s Roberto Ferrari. With his win, Hunter also assumed the race lead.
“It’s nice to win on my daughter’s birthday!” an enthusiastic Hunter said after the stage. “The team worked well for me and had confidence in me. The sprint was hard to judge because of the headwind. Team Sky worked hard for their man Sutton. Gregy Rast and Michal Kwiatkowski brought me perfectly to the sprint position too. I waited a long time and only went at 100 meters from the line. It’s nice to have that yellow jersey too.”
The 139.7 kilometer journey from Dornbirn to Götzis saw a group of four take advantage of the short, early climbs in the stage, with Greg van Avermaet (BMC Racing), Nicolas Edet (Cofidis), Dimitry Kozonchuk (Geox-TMC) and Martin Schöffmann (WSA Viper Bike Carinthia) jumping clear after just 10 kilometers of racing.
The quartet managed to build up a solid lead over the peloton, but the sprinter’s teams made sure their advantage remained manageable. The finishing circuits to close out the day saw a motivated peloton reel the escape back into the fold with less than 20 kilometers left to race.
In the end, it was Hunter who proved fastest as he sprinted through the market in Götzis to secure his second victory of the season ahead of the others.
Tomorrow will see the race’s first foray into the mountains, with the climbers relishing the battle set for the slopes of the Kitzbüheler Horn. The peloton will begin the 158.3 kilometer effort in Innsbruck and end with the 7.1 kilometer test up to the mountain top resort. The Kitzbüheler Horn’s 12.5 percent average gradient with a maximum pitch of 22.3 percent is expected to reveal the contenders for the overall classification.