Bradley Wiggins proved that he means business in this year's Tour of California when he went on the attack in the crosswinds on a day that looked like an easy one for the sprinters. The Brit briefly dropped all his GC rivals and was about to ride away with the overall victory already in the first stage before several teams combined forces to shut down the move.

Team Sky and Bradley Wiggins went on the attack as the Tour of California got off to an exciting start. Not content to simply sit in the bunch on stage one, the Tour de France winner forced his way into an elite echelon group as he and his Team Sky team-mates dropped the hammer in the cross-winds.

The significant move came with 60 kilometres still remaining and saw Wiggins and Luke Rowe contribute to a group which opened out a gap of 45 seconds at one point on the chasing pack. Run ragged for almost 40km, the peloton finally reacted to ensure a bunch sprint into Sacramento which was narrowly claimed by Mark Cavendish.

The Manxman and a number of his Omega Pharma – Quick-Step team-mates had previously added their horsepower to the break before it was shut down, yet still had enough in reserve to set up the lead-out. John Degenkolb (Giant-Shimano) opened up the sprint after 193.1km of action but was just bested in a photo finish by new race leader Cavendish, with Moreno Hofland (Belkin) rounding out the podium places.

Wiggins finished safely in the pack, in the same time as his compatriot after being well protected by his team-mates ahead of Monday’s key time trial.

“We’re really happy with how the day went," confirmed Sports Director Kurt-Asle Arvesen after the race. "The whole team rode well and stuck together to look after Bradley.

“We had some cross-winds at the start of the stage and then we had a lot more towards the end of the day. We had Bradley up there with Luke in the first group in the split. That was good to see and he’s clearly riding well. He also had good back-up from the team to put him in that position.

“The move could have got a bit further if there had been more cooperation but the main thing was that we came through the stage without problems and now we’ll focus everything on the TT tomorrow.”