Quick Step's Tom Boonen just beat Britain's Adam Blythe to win the opening stage of the Tour Of Qatar today.
A 142.5km stage from Barzan Towers to Doha Golf Club and featured a strong field including World Champion Mark Cavendish, who had been struggling with a bug which has seen him sleep for seventeen hours solid, the day before the race started.
Other Brits in a very strong field were Team Sky's Jeremy Hunt and Ian Stannard, Adam Blythe for BMC, RTS Racing Team's Alex Coutts and Lee Rodgers and Ireland's Omega Pharma rider Matt Brammier, Lotto's Mehdi Sohrabi and RTS' David McCann.
The peloton stayed pretty much together for most of the stage until we reached then ten kilometres to go mark, when the teams with the top sprinters started to move up to get their men like Cavendish, Mark Renshaw (Rabbobank), Thor Hushovd (BMC), Tom Boonen (Quick Step), Peter Sagan (Liquigas), Tyler Farrer (Garmin), Denis Galimzyanov (Katusha), Robbie Mcewen (Green Edge, John Degenkolb (Project) and Filippo Pozzato (Farnesse).
Another useful fast man Greg Henderson (Lotto) picked up a puncture as did Galimzyanov inside the last five kilometres.
Green Edge raised the tempo and speed with two and a half kilometres to go. Garmin along with Rabbobank and Team Sky with Jeremy Hunt reacted.
Into the final kilometre,. Tom Boonen went and was able to win the stage ahead of Adam Blythe and Peter Sagan in a time of 3hr:11 mins.22 seconds. Tyler Farrar was fourth with Team Sky's other sprinter David Appolino fifth and Mark Renshaw sixth.
Tomorrow's second stage is an 11.3km team time trial around Lusail.