The 136.5-kilometre stage started from Vásárosnamény and included three major laps of the Bereg region, passing through the villages of Tákos, Csaroda, Tarpa, Tivadar, Gulács and Jánd – with two intermediate sprint.
After a sharp start, there was a steady stream of attempts, but a viable breakaway only emerged after about 40 kilometres, when was broken by Igor Wlodarczyk of Poland, Balázs Pollner of Hungary, Victor Johannsen of Denmark, Oskar Hertz (Tscherning Cycling Academy) of Denmark, Mikal Uglehus of Norway, Jakub Husar of Slovakia and Stepan Zahalka of the Czech Republic.
The biggest lead of the breakaway peaked at just over a minute, with Uglehus winning the first speed section stage.
Husar was the first of the front runners to surrender, before the others were caught with just under sixty kilometres to go. As you would expect, tempers continued to flare, but no one managed to pull away until the second intermediate sprint, which was also won by Uglehus, who took the green jersey for the points leader.
As the final 20 kilometres approached, Danish-born Victor Vad (Tscherning Cycling Academy), who has Hungarian ancestry and Danish nationality, started the race and managed to pull away from the peloton by just under half a minute, but ran out of steam with eight kilometres to go.
From then on, the sprint teams took the initiative, with the Norwegians in particular working hard, and it paid off as Felix Orn-Kristoff won the stage ahead of Czech Krystof Král and Slovak Simon Gottstein.
“It was a stage that went according to our strategy, we had a breakaway with Mikal and then once he was caught by the peloton we tried to keep things under control. In the last 20 kilometres, a cyclist pulled away and built up quite a big lead, I was a bit scared, but we caught him and I managed to come out on top in the sprint,” said Orn-Kristoff, who won bronze at the World Championships in Glasgow a few days ago.
The best Hungarian was András Pakot (Hungarian national team) who finished tenth.
“From the start there was a steady flow of horses and then the breakaway of the day went away, in which I had a teammate through Balázs Pollner, so we achieved one of our set goals, which was to delegate a wheelie to the breakaway. There was a lot of pace during the stage, I’m happy that we finally managed to finish in the top 10, although I would have liked to finish further ahead, but that was it this time – said András Pakot, the owner of the distinctive jersey for the best Hungarian, after the stage.
The blue jersey for the best first-year rider was also won by Felix Orn-Kristoff.
Results
Stage 1, Vásárosnamény-Vásárosnamény (136.5 km)
1. Felix-Orn Kristoff (Norway) 2:56:03
2. Krystof Kral (Czech Republic) a.i
3. Simon Gottstein (Slovakia) a.i
4. Kacper Mientki (Poland) a.i
5. Juraj Vrbik (Slovakia) a.i
6. Gabriel Preyler (Austria) a.i
7. Simon Schabernig (Austria) a.i
8. Mikal Uglehus (Norway) a.i
9. Jesper Stiansen (Norway) a.i
10. Pakot András (Hungary) a.i
The Nations’ Cup Hungary continues with two half-stages, on 17 August in the morning around Ibrány (86.3 kilometres), while the race will finish with an individual time trial in Nyíregyháza (3.5 kilometres) in the afternoon.
