Niki Terpstra (Omega Pharma-Quick Step) emerged as the strongest from the breakaway that stayed away to the finish in the first stage of the Tour of Qatar and is the first leader of the race. We have already gathered several reactions and have posted a few more below.

Laurent Mangel (FDJ, made the first echelon in the crosswinds, 72nd +2.15)

"This is the Tour of Qatar but it's good to start like that. In fact, I was leading the pack and rode with two Omega Pharma riders and we rode hard. It was very nervous and I can say that it was fast."

Martial Gayant (sports director FDJ whose best rider was Arnaud Demare in 8th)

"In ten kilometres, we had six punctures, two for Arnaud Démare. It caused some panic but luckily all of the riders who were affected, returned to the front."

Servais Knaven (sports director Team Sky whose best rider was Chris Sutton in 13th)

“The racing was full on from beginning to end. The winds caused havoc and the peloton split into five separate groups at one point. Three groups did eventually come back together, but just before the last one regained contact, the five riders made their move.

“That was just before the intermediate sprint, and even though we sent Danny [Pate], Luke [Rowe] and Gabba [Gabriel Rasch] to the front, we were expecting the sprint teams to bring them back. They got within about 15 seconds of doing that at one point, but then no-one could finish the job off and the break were able to stay away.

“Those guys deserve credit though, they were super strong and worked really well together today.”

“Ian [Stannard] and a few of our other riders were caught up behind those crashes but fortunately they didn’t lose any time as they all happened in the last three kilometres. All our guys stayed on their bikes – there were no crashes and no flat tyres for them – so we’re all happy about that.

“Tomorrow, the winds are not forecast to be as strong but they will still play a part, I’m sure, and we will have to stay alert. It’s going to be another tough day but we want to come through it unscathed before Tuesday’s time trial.”

Lieuwe Westra (Astana, part of the early breakaway, 15th +0.07)

“That was a beautiful day at the races. It feels good to open back up again to see what still works !”

Lorenzo Lapage (sports director Orica-GreenEDGE whose best rider was Aidis Kruopis in 12th)

"The plan today was to have numbers in the group at the finish and then go into the sprint with Kruopis. We had a very hard wind today. There was a crosswind early and in the last 25 kilometre, we had a strong headwind. The damage was done in the crosswinds.

"We assumed responsibility for the chase when the five leaders that broke away late in the race had gained 25”. We had the idea that some other team would come up to help but that didn’t happen. Once we decided to stop doing all the work on our own, we knew that the breakaway, with so many strong riders, had a big chance to stay away. This was the same scenario as last year.

"We had talked about our overall ambitions. If Niki Terpstra doesn’t have a technical problem on any really important moments in the race, he has already half of the win in his hands. He has a strong team behind him, and he’s good against the clock. Even with this, we will still give it our best shot."

Lars Michaelsen (sports dirrector Tinkoff-Saxo whose best rider was Michael Mørkøv in 11th)

“The boys did a very nice effort after kilometer 38 where they managed to explode the field in the cross wind making a huge selection between the GC favorites through the next 6 kilometers. But eventually the favorites were once again in the same bunch before the finale. But it was never an easy effort getting through as the wind kept splitting up the field. However, we had Matti (Breschel), Kump (Marko), Kroon (Karsten) and Michael (Mørkøv) in the first group to cross the finish line and Michael sprintes his way to tenth position [eleventh, ed.]"