Germany tour: Italian Filippo Ganna wins prologue from Weimar

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Filippo Ganna, here at the European Championships in Munich a week ago

Photo: LEONHARD SIMON / EPA

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, on Wednesday 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 drive in at the front and I succeeded,” said the Politt.

So the man from Cologne 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.

Bernal, who was injured for a long time, is also at the start

As expected, Emanuel Buchmann played no role in the fight 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 pretty good.

It's not my specialty.

I'm more looking at the mountain finish," said Buchmann.

Simon Geschke, who finished 91st, also has an eye on 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.

Bauhaus tested positive for Corona

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.

The Germany Tour leads over five days of racing until Sunday over around 700 kilometers with 11,000 meters in altitude from Weimar to Stuttgart, a highlight is the mountain finish at Schauinsland near Freiburg on Saturday.

The Deutschland Tour has been held with various interruptions since 1911, and there has been a new edition since 2018.

kjo/dpa