Brand breaks away on opening stage of Tour de Pologne

British rider Sam Brand blew away the cobwebs in fine style on stage one of the Tour de Pologne, jumping into the early breakaway quintet to tick off the first objective for Team Novo Nordisk in the 79^th edition of the WorldTour stage race and Andrea Peron finishing in the top 20.

Sam Brand:

“It’s great to finally get up the road again, I’ve been trying for a while and to be up there showing off our jersey and what’s possible with diabetes in a WorldTour race is just amazing. We all said in our pre-race meeting how important it was to make it into the break today and I’m happy that we could nail that objective on day one.”

“Today was a long one at over 200km, so it wasn’t easy but the motivation you get from being part of this special team gives us another gear and I was fortunate to be part of a group that wanted to collaborate, and the bunch let us go early and I think it was within the last 15km that we got caught.”

Head Sports Director Massimo Podenzana:

“That’s a satisfactory start for us today. It’s a big race for us and to be out front all day for 200km with Sam was a perfect scenario for two reasons. One because it meant that we could sit back and help Andrea to conserve some energy in the wheels and two because we show ourselves out front in a WorldTour race.”

“For Sam today it was a perfect moment to try his luck in the breakaway, it’s been a while since he found the right move and he did his job well. Tomorrow is another long one but should also come down to a sprint finish with a fast local lap of 8.6km at the end and we’ll try again with Andrea.”