Start of the Germany tour: Ganna races to victory in Weimar

With a narrow victory at the start of the Deutschland Tour, Italian Filippo Ganna secured the first leader's jersey in the stage race.

Start of the Germany tour: Ganna races to victory in Weimar

With a narrow victory at the start of the Deutschland Tour, Italian Filippo Ganna secured the first leader's jersey in the stage race. Strong third is defending champion Nils Politt. The Cologne native has a good chance of taking the lead in the next few days.

Filippo Ganna won the chase for seconds through the cultural city of Weimar and is the first leader of the Germany tour. The time trial world champion won the prologue, which was only 2.6 kilometers long, and was two seconds faster than the Dutchman Bauke Mollema. Defending champion Nils Politt was third, three seconds behind.

"It was special to start the race with starting number one. I wanted to finish at the front and I succeeded," said the man from Cologne. Politt thus has every chance of taking over the leader's jersey in the next two days. "He will have a free role in the first few days and we want to organize the race offensively because we don't have a sprinter with us," said sporting director Rolf Aldag.

Egan Bernal back after a bad fall

As expected, Emanuel Buchmann played no role in the battle for the day's victory. The tour specialist lost 17 seconds to leader Ganna, but is still one of the favorites for overall victory. "For my standards, that was quite good. It's not my special discipline. I'm more interested in the mountain finish," said Buchmann.

Simon Geschke, who finished 91st, also looks at them. The 36-year-old fell the morning before the prologue, but only suffered abrasions on his left arm. Former Tour winner Egan Bernal was 73rd at the same time as Buchmann. The 25-year-old uses the race to collect more racing kilometers. Bernal fell badly during training in January and broke more than 20 bones. Last week he completed the first race after the accident with the Tour of Denmark.

Phil Bauhaus is canceled due to corona infection

For Phil Bauhaus, the tour was over before it even started. The sprinter tested positive for the corona virus a few hours before the prologue. As his team Bahrain-Victorious announced, all other drivers and team members tested negative. Because of the short distance, sprinters like Bauhaus were also expected to place well.

This year's Germany tour runs over five days and 710 kilometers from Weimar to Stuttgart. The king's stage starts on Saturday in Freiburg and ends on the 1200 meter high Schauinsland. The first stage on Thursday runs within Thuringia over 171.7 kilometers from Weimar to Meiningen. With the addition of a day to the race, the fourth edition of the Tour, following its reintroduction, makes a step up towards the week-long version held from 1999 to 2008.

The establishment of the race took place under difficult conditions due to the corona pandemic. "Meanwhile, the response is getting better and better and cities and municipalities are coming to us and want to be part of the tour," said sports director Fabian Wegmann to T-Online.