The People’s Choice Classic is the prelude to the opening WorldTour race of the season, The Tour Down Under. It’s a 50km long criterium, and that means one thing. It usually ends in a sprint.

Notable past winners include Robbie McEwen and Andre Greipel. 

However, this years race was won by cycling’s new star, Marcel Kittel of Giant-Shimano, who narrowly beat Greipel and rising start Caleb Ewan.

The race began, as most criteriums usually do, with attacks coming from left, right and centre.

The opening break was Nathan Haas, Travis Meyer, Mexime Belkov, Robert Gesink and Jack Haig, although they were soon brought back.

The race is unique as it offers cash prizes at the various sprints along the course. Garmin’s Nathan Haas won the first three ahead of riders such as Luca Wackermann, Axel Domont and Anthony Roux.

As soon as the break was caught, Sky came to the fore and new signing Phillip Deignan took the final cash sprint of the day.

Not too far from the end, there was a crash that didn’t do too much damage, but forced Sky’s Chris Sutton to get a new bike and saw Belkin’s Graeme Brown sit out a lap before rejoining the peloton.

In the end, it came down to a bunch sprint and, effectively, a drag race between the two powerhouse Germans inside the final 200m and Kittel took the honours.

There were four DNF’s: Sky’s Richie Porte, Travis Meyer of Drapac, Danny van Poppel of Trek and Movistar’s Giovanni Visconti. 

Poor Viscont hasn’t had much like since emerging onto the big stage with two break away wins at last years Giro. Since then, he has crashed and been ill and as a result of this crash, suffered a compound fracture of his leg.

People’s Choice Classic Top 10

1. Marcel Kittel 1:04:34

2. Andre Greipel

3. Caleb Ewan

4. Chris Sutton

5. Jose Joaquin Rojas

6. Julian Alaphilippe

7. Mark Renshaw

8. Jonathan Cantwell

9. Elia Viviani

10. Jurgen Roelandts