Team Sky's Peter Kennaugh has won the opening stage of the 67th Critérium du Dauphiné.
This traditional Tour De France warm up race, which attracted a strong field with Chris Froome of Team Sky and 2014 Tour De France winner Vincenzo Nibali amongst the pickof a field of 167 riders, started with a 132km stage from Ugine to Albertville.
After eleven kilometres, Maarten Wynants (LottoNL-Jumbo), Romain Guillemois (Europcar), Daniel Teklehaimanot (MTN-Qhubeka) and Björn Thurau (Bora-Argon 18) escaped after Gert Dockx had been forced to abandon following being in a crash.
The gap went out to seven minutes with Teklehaimanot taking KOM points including points on the Cote du Villard with forty one kilometres to go.
With two laps of a 16km circuit to go, the gap had dropped to 1.44 so the break split with Thurau getting slightly ahead of Teklehaimanot to take the points on the penultimate climb of the day.
The duo plugged away with a lead of 1.30 and were 1.10 ahead when they went over the finish line for the penultimate time with Team Sky leading the peloton.
Thurau went off on his own as attacks started to come from the peloton with Daniel Oss able to catch up to Teklehaimanot just as Thurau went over the final climb of the day and took the final two points on offer .
The peloton were closing in and five chasers including Oss and Team Sky's Peter Kennaugh, Grivko, Gorky Izagirre and Wyss went after Thurau. They were within twenty seconds with ten kilometres to go and four kilometres later, they had caught up to Thurau.
Peter Kennaugh attacked with 1.9kms to go, leaving the others to be caught by the peloton. Kennaugh kept going and took the win in 3.06.41, two seconds ahead of Lampre-Merida's Sacha Modolo and MTN Qhubeka's Edvald Boasson Hagen, followed by Benoot, Gerrans, Bouhanni, McCarthy, Valverde, Sam Dumoulin and Cyril Gautier.
Time bonuses mean that Kennaugh now leads the race by six seconds from Modolo.