CYCLING: WATCHING PETER Sagan surge up the final hill and play cat and mouse with Fabian Cancellara and Edvald Boasson-Hagen before winning here, it is clear the hulking Slovakian will prove a potent threat in the Olympic road race on July 28th.

Mark Cavendish has high ambitions for that event, but on this evidence, Sagan has everything going for him: the ability to climb at high intensity, a fearsome sprint and an ice cool head on his vast but youthful shoulders.

The 22-year-old came to this race with high expectations having reeled off 13 wins already this year, including five of the eight stages in the Tour of California.

Here, he was stunningly alert when Fabian Cancellara made what should have been the stage-winning attack – an unlikely move for the yellow jersey wearer – on the steepest part of the mile and a half long climb to the finish.

The Swiss surged as the field clattered over a stretch of cobbles and through a chicane, and what followed was a brief, enthralling poker game enacted at 30mph.

The peloton was behind, Cancellara threshing away ahead of Sagan, Boasson-Hagen chasing in between. Cancellara visibly wanted the youth to contribute to the pacemaking, flicking his elbow in the usual signal a rider makes when he wants a breakaway companion to come past and ride hard, but the gesture was made more in hope than expectation.

Sagan stayed put, until the critical moment 150 metres from the finish, by which time Cancellara knew he had been completely outsmarted.

Sagan could, on this evidence, win a hatful of stages in the coming weeks, while in the future, who knows? He is the first rider 22 years old or under to win a Tour stage since a brash Texan named Lance Armstrong sprinted into Verdun in 1993 aged 21. No one would have imagined the trajectory that Armstrong’s career would take after that – and you would have to be a brave man to bet where his story will end now – but Sagan has the same killer instinct under a more placid exterior.

The most telling moment as he spoke after the stage was an aside when he was asked whether he felt stressed at his first Tour. His result had spoken for itself, but he added “what pressure? It’s a bike race” before going back on message.

There is more than a hint there of the young Eddy Merckx being asked whether he had set out to win a certain race, and responding that he had not intended to come second.

Today he could well be in the mix again on flatter roads as the race heads across Belgium to Tournai for a finish which will suit Cavendish, who dropped out of the lead group two kilometres from the top of the climb.

On the heels of Sagan, Cancellara and Boasson-Hagen, a select lead group of 45 men had closed in by the line. They included all the candidates for overall victory with one key exception: Chris Froome, Sky’s possible back-up for the overall title if Bradley Wiggins falters or falls. The Kenyan-born climber suffered a puncture late in the stage and finished one minute, 25 seconds behind, in 95th place. It is not the end of his hopes of a high placing in the race, but it is a blow nonetheless.

The finale to the stage was as intense as on any first stage of the Tour, but physically this was a more demanding opening day than usual, constantly climbing and descending through the Ardennes before the final drag to the finish, on the south side of the river Meuse from Liege.

For most of the stage, there was a six-man group in front, of the kind that is typical on an early Tour stage, with the French teams there in force along with Saxo Bank, who have been prominent in abortive escapes since their leader Alberto Contador was banned in February leaving them with no great sense of purpose.

The sextet dominated the hills counting for the King of the Mountains prize as well as the intermediate sprint, where Mark Cavendish finished eighth, gleaning a few points. That does not, his Team Sky manager Sean Yates insisted, mean he is going for the green jersey, but the points will come in handy should the maillot vert come the Manxman’s way.

There were two crashes in the hectic run-in to the foot of the finish climb, the first involving Wiggins’s team-mate Michael Rogers, who regained the bunch to finish in the front group.

Froome’s puncture came a few kilometres later, and appeared to throw Sky briefly off kilter a little.

Wiggins had been prominent at the front of the peloton all day, usually in the slipstream of the German Christian Knees, who appears to be his appointed “minder”, but with Knees and Ritchie Porte waiting for Froome, he dropped back before reappearing on the climb where his climbing legs were clearly up to the task.

Guardian Service