Luka Mezgec (Giant-Shimano) continued where he left off at the Tour of Beijing, taking the opening stage in a sprint finish.

The 26-year-old won the final stage of last year's race in what was his maiden WorldTour victory.

Mezgec took his fifth stage win of the season by a considerable margin from Caleb Ewan (Orica-GreenEDGE) and Tyler Farrar (Garmin-Sharp), who finished second and third respectively.

The day's breakaway consisted of three riders - Jérémy Roy (FDJ.fr), Tosh Van de Sande (Lotto-Belisol) and Christophe Kern (Europcar) - who established a lead of more than three minutes by the time ten kilometres had passed.

That had grown to eight minutes forty kilometres later, but the bunch began to reel the trio back in shortly afterwards.

In the peloton, Sky were doing much of the work on the front in an attempt to set up Ben Swift for the stage win. However, they appeared to have made a misjudgment, with the Yorkshireman a long way back going into the technical final kilometres.

Steele von Hoff (Garmin-Sharp) got the sprint underway as he attempted to set up Farrar, but the American rider was powerless to hold off Mezgec, who battled through to take the win.

Ewan also rounded Farrar to take second, but the 30-year-old held on to take third.

“That’s a fantastic comeback to this race and I hope we can do something more this week,” said Mezgec.

“I feel honoured that I can be a player on the flat stages. It’s a big compliment for me as a second year as a professional.

"I suffered today as it was constantly up and down and the race was at quite high altitude for a long time.

"The team was strong in helping control early on and then keeping me in position when it was hard, keeping me fresher for the finish. The plan was to stick me in the right wheel at the front in the final few kilometres and this worked perfectly.

"It's great to win again here in Beijing and hopefully we can continue this week with other opportunities for us. It will be hard to defend the overall in the next few days before the mountain stage but we will see tomorrow how it is."

The race continues on Saturday with a 147.5 kilometre route from Chong Li to Yanqing.

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Jamie Hall
Cycling editor and football writer. Currently studying sports journalism at university.