The 72nd Tour de Pologne began on Sunday with a 122 km circuit race in the heart of the capital city of Warsaw. With 10 loops of 12 km each, the course featureD plenty of technical sections with corners and cobbles, but Team Katusha’s Sven Erik Bystrøm was up for the challenging sprint finish, giving his all and taking 11th place for the first of seven stages in the Polish tour.

"This was a stage without much stress for us. The goal was to support our GC guys and to keep them in the front for the final part of the distance and we did that. Later Sven Erik was free to try to sprint and I think he did a good job taking eleventh place. This was just an opening stage to get a feel for the race. All of the important stages are still to come," said sports director Gennady Mikhaylov.

After controlling a breakaway of three riders, the teams of the sprinters took over at the front to set up the sprint. The mass sprint was won by Marcel Kittel (Team Giant-Alpecin) at a winning time of 2:43.13. Joining him on the same time were Caleb Ewan of Orica-GreenEdge and Niccolo Bonifazio (Lampre-Merida). With the win comes the first leader’s jersey for Kittel.

Stage 2 on Monday brings the first road stage from Czestochowa to Dabrowa Górnicza at 146 km. The first part of the course will provide some up and down terrain before the land flattens out to set up for what should be another day for the sprinters.