Post Danmark Rundt: Matthew Goss takes bunch sprint victory in Stage 1

The first stage of the Post Danmark Rundt, finished with a dramatic bunch sprint in the western Danish city of Holstebro. HTC-Columbia's Matt Goss continued a rampantly successful 2010 season, which has included a stage win at the Giro and the win at the Philadelphia International Classic.

The first stage started and then finished 175 kilometers later in the Theatre Square in the middle of Holstebro. A break jumped clear in the early going and consisted of five aggressive souls: Jacob Nielsen (Glud & Marstrand), Michael Reihe (Designa Kokken), Francesco Tomei (ISD Neri), Floris Goesinnen (Skil-Shimano), and Manuel Belletti (Colnago). The quintet was chased for a long while by Concordia' Kristian Sobota, but he was never able to make the junction with the cooperating five.

The day's break quickly added minute after minute to their gap over the still slumbering field. Danish superteam, Saxo Bank, took control of the reins at the front and set about whittling down the gap after it had gone out to a maximum of six minutes. Saxo Bank's young Danes, Jonas Aaen, Michael Morkov, and Andre Steensen, put in a hard day's work at the front.

En route to getting caught inside the final circuits in Holstebro, Colnago's Manuel Belletti won everything on offer. Belletti took both bonus sprints and both mountain sprints to make for a successful day out front.

As the race hit the closing circuits, Garmin (for Farrar), HTC-Columbia (for Goss and Renshaw), and Cervelo Test Team (for Bos) all did their mightiest to gain control of the front. The wild finale led to an unsurprising, though still frightening mass crash of 20-30 riders. Out of the chaos emerged former Saxo Bank rider, Matthew Goss, to take his third win of the season. Michael van Stayen of Topsport Vlaanderen followed in second with HTC-Columbia's leadout man extraordinaire, Mark Renshaw, in third.

"There were three laps of 3.5 kilometres at the finish and it was very technical. We knew that it might be risky so we went to check things out before and that helped a lot," said HTC-Columbia sports director Brian Holm. "For the first 150 kilometres things were quiet, Saxo Bank were doing a lot of work, and then things started to get faster for the last part, and it all got a bit more complicated."

It got a lot more complicated when the driving rain began to fall according to Holm: "One of our riders crashed [Gert Dockx] on the finishing circuit as it started raining very heavily, and that meant we knew we had to stay at the front. Coming up to the sprint, there were a lot of crashes too in the closing kilometres, but Goss got through them ok for the win. I'm very pleased for him."

HTC-Columbia is harboring no overall fantasies at the moment, optin instead to take each stage as it comes: "Goss was hoping for a win here, he's got it now and I know all the guys are keen to do well here, so we'll take it on the day by day."