Matthew Brennan (Visma-Lease a Bike) won stage 1 in a reduced bunch sprint, narrowly edging Jonathan Milan (Lidl-Trek) with a late bike throw. Danny van Poppel (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe) finished third. Wout van Aert seized a three-second time bonus with 6.5km to go, moving level with prologue winner Søren Wærenskjold while Sam Watson sat one second ahead. Brennan earned a ten-second bonus for the stage win but remained behind on tie-breaker fractions from the prologue time trial. Van Poppel took the leader's jersey by 0.36 seconds, with Watson and Brennan close behind.
Milan appeared to have won the stage but instead, threw his bike a moment too soon and lost out to Brennan's late charge. "I knew it was really close. It was so fast, and I went for the lunge right at the end. I thought I just had him but you never know. I'm super ecstatic."
The battle for the overall classification started with the time bonus sprint with 6.5km to go when Wout van Aert (Visma-Lease a Bike) came from behind to snatch the three-second bonus ahead of Sam Watson (Ineos Grenadiers). That result brought Van Aert level with prologue winner Søren Wærenskjold (Uno-X Mobility) and Watson one second ahead.
Although Brennan, nine seconds behind in the GC after the prologue, earned a ten-second bonus for the stage win, it wasn't enough to assure him the race lead as the tie-breaker came from the fractions of a second in the opening time trial. Instead, Van Poppel claimed the jersey with a fraction of 0.36 seconds to Watson's 0.52 and Brennan's 0.56.
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