Sepp Kuss crashes in Tour of Burgos opening stage, Pavel Bittner wins the stage

Now that the Olympic road races have been run, the focus of the 'asphalt riders' is gradually shifting back to the major goals that are yet to come. The main focus is on the Vuelta a España, which will start next Saturday in Lisbon, Portugal. An important preparation race for the third grand tour of the year is the Tour of Burgos, also taking place in Spain.

This was evident in the field of participants for the five-day race, which included Sepp Kuss (Visma | Lease a Bike), Thymen Arensman (INEOS Grenadiers), Antonio Tiberi (Bahrain Victorious), Nairo Quintana (Movistar) and Tao Geoghegan Hart (Lidl-Trek). All of them are riders who want to perform well in the Vuelta a España, some after recovering from injury or illness.

The first day of the Tour of Burgos featured a relatively flat 168-kilometer stage finishing in Burgos. Three riders broke away early: Rodrigo Alvarez (Burgos-BH), Iker Mintegi (Euskaltel-Euskadi) and Diego Pablo Sevilla (Polti-Kometa). Jayco AlUla and Tudor controlled the peloton, working for sprinters Caleb Ewan and Marius Mayrhofer.

The peloton rode at a relatively calm pace towards the finish, where temperatures exceeded 35 degrees Celsius. This is notable because in a few weeks, the Vuelta will also visit two of Spain's hottest cities, Cordoba and Sevilla, in the middle of August.

At 34 kilometers from the finish, there was a crash involving Enekoitz Azparren (Euskaltel-Euskadi) and Mulu Kinfe Hailemichael (Caja Rural-Seguros RCA). Kuss also had to change his bike after the crash, but it wasn't immediately clear if the American was involved in the fall. Shortly after, it was confirmed that he was: along with Javier Romo (Movistar), the American hit the ground but managed to continue.

While the team leader was down at the back, the rest of the team stayed at the front to avoid danger. This automatically increased the pace, ensuring that the last breakaway riders were caught just over twelve kilometers from the finish. At that point, Max Poole grabbed a few seconds in an intermediate sprint.

This was a small prelude to the big sprint we would see in Burgos. In the numerous roundabouts in the last five kilometers, dsm-firmenich PostNL kept things well under control, following which Groupama-FDJ boldly took over with a thousand meters to go. Ivan Garcia Cortina of Movistar made an early move, but it was the Czech Bittner who took the win with a strong sprint. Giacomo Nizzolo finished second, followed by Garcia Cortina and Edoardo Affini of Visma | Lease a Bike. Ide Schelling finished seventh.