John Degenkolb was left with only a 15th place to show for his efforts in the final of the opening road stage of Paris-Nice today after he ran out of legs in the final metres of the sprint finish.

Stage 1 of Paris-Nice always looked to be a clear cut sprint opportunity, and that it was but only after a hard fight to bring back the day’s breakaway of just two riders. The two got away after the first intermediate sprint 19km into the stage and built a lead of a handful of minutes, always well controlled by the peloton.

The game of cat and mouse unfolded over the course of the stage which was a slow one by all accounts with both the break and the bunch timing their efforts for the final stages. With 45km to race their lead was under two minutes but as they got nearer to the finish they managed to hold onto their lead, with still over one minute at 10km to go.

The pace of the peloton though was enough to bring the race back together with 1500m to go and from there a hectic sprint unfolded.

Team Giant-Alpecin had done a good job in looking after Degenkolb all day in preparation for the finish and as the race passed under the flamme rouge the black and white jerseys hit the front with sprinter in tow. Degenkolb launched his sprint fiercely but it proved to be 50m too early as he faded in sight of the line eventually coming home 15th, with Alexander Kristoff (Katusha) proving fastest.

Tomorrow should be another opportunity to have a shot at the stage victory and the team will be keen to learn from today’s mistakes and come out strongly tomorrow.

Team coach Adriaan Helmantel said after the race: “The race was all steady until the final 10km where things got quite frantic. The guys were a bit late to the front in the final, later than planned, but they still managed to get to the front by staying calm and waiting for it to open up.

“This put Ramon [Sinkeldam] into position to open up the sprint for John but he went too early and faded at the end. Some days it doesn’t work out but we’ll see where we went wrong and improve on this for tomorrow.”

Koen de Kort added: “It was really hectic out there in the final and it didn’t open up for us until the last kilometre. From there Ramon did a good lead-out with John on his wheel but because it was so late I couldn’t drop in front of John to do the final kick. John then went too early, he said he started at 300m to go instead of 200m and couldn’t hold it until the finish. We’ll be back trying again tomorrow though.”