One day after his susprise fourth place in the mountain prologue, Nicola Ruffoni (Bardiani) confirmed his outstanding form by taking an impressive victory in the bunch sprint on the first stage of the Tour of Austria. After his team had worked all day, he held off Andrea Pasqualon (Roth) and Yannick Martinez (Delko) in the final dash to the line and also moved into the race lead.

When he turned professional, Nicola Ruffoni was widely regarded as one of the biggest sprinting talents. His potential became evident for the cycling world at the Tour of Britain where he nearly beat Marcel Kittel and Mark Cavendish on two occasions.

However, his progress has stalled and he was far from his previous level in 2015 and the first part of the 2016 season. He showed small signs of improvement at the Giro though and now he seems to finally be back on track.

Known as a pure sprinter, he delivered a major surprise in yesterday’s 600m mountain prologue at the Tour of Austria as he finished fourth. That gave his Bardiani team confidence in him for today’s flat first stage and he paid them back by taking a clear win in the bunch sprint and the yellow jersey.

After the prologue, the GC battle was expected to be put on hold in stage 1 which was one of the few chances for the sprinters in this year’s race. The 186.2km between the big cities of Innsbruck and Salzburg were predominantly flat and only included a category 3 and a category 4 climb in the middle section. There were 1972m of climbing but the stage didn’t include any major ascents and the final categorized climb came 62.1km from the flat finish.

There were no non-starters when the peloton gathered in Innsbruck under a sunny sky and they were keen to get the race off to a fast start. There were lots of attacks in the early phase and no one had managed to escape after 10km of racing.

The aggressive riding continued, with riders like Valerio Agnoli (Astana), Peter Koning (Drapac) and Julien El Fares (Delko) among the riders to briefly get a small advantage. However, no one had got a significant gap at the 50km mark where the fast pace started to take its toll, with riders getting dropped from the rear end of the field.

The elastic finally snapped when Alessandro Vanotti (Astana), Koning and Maximilian Kuen (Amplatz) took off and they had a 30-second advantage after 70km of very fast racing. That allowed Vanotti to beat Kuen and Koning in the first intermediate sprint at the 76km mark.

The peloton was keen to take a small breather and so the gap had gone out to 2.15 when a crash forced Alex Meier (Hrinkow), Dnnis Paulus (Tirol) and Michael Sprenger (Wibateck) to abandon. It was 4.40 when Vanotti beat Kuen and Koning in the first KOM sprint and at the 105km mark it was 5.30.

The Drapac team of race leader William Clarke took charge in the peloton and slowly started to bring the gap down. After 120km of racing, it was 4.20 and they reached the top of the second climb with a deficit of 3.45 after Kuen had beaten Vanotti in the sprint.

Vanotti beat Kuen in the second sprint as they briefly ventured into Germany while Bardiani came to the fore to join forces with Drapac. They had reduced the gap to 2.20 at the 143km mark where the peloton was back on Austrian soil. Moments later, Kuen was dropped from the breakaway.

Koning decided to go solo and so managed to win the final intermediate sprint. He was still ahead with 10km to go and Bardiani was not getting much help from the other teams. With 6km to go, the gap was still 45 seconds.

Astana and Cofidis finally contributed to the chase and so Koning was ultimately brought back. Hence, the fast stage came down to the expected bunch sprint where Ruffoni broke his drought by beating Andrea Pasuqalon and Yannick Martinez.

After his impressive fourth place in the prologue, Ruffoni takes the overall lead with a five-second advantage over Pasqualon while Clarke drops to third, 7 seconds behind the Italian. He even has a chance to extend his lead in stage 2 which could be the final chance for the fast finishers in this year’s race. The 205.5km between Mondsee and Steyr include a category 2 climb at the 73.8km mark and 2562m of climbing but the roads are predominantly flat. There are a few rolling hills in the finale but the final kilometres are flat.