Copenhagen Sprint: Breakaway caught on the line as Jasper Philipsen avoids crashes and chaos to claim sprint victory

The Copenhagen Sprint, now in its second edition, and as the name suggests, is one for the sprinters with a pan-flat 228km from Roskilde and finishing on 10.2km circuits in Copenhagen.

While Jordi Meeus (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe) started the day as the defending champion, he was always going to face tough opposition from the likes of rival sprinters Tim Merlier (Soudal-QuickStep), Jasper Philipsen (Alpecin-Premier Tech), Dylan Groenewegen (Unibet Rose Rockets), Tobias Lund Andresen (Decathlon CMA CGM) and Arnaud De Lie (Lotto Intermarché).

The breakaway of the day emerged in the early stages of the race with Frederik Rodenberg (STARK-Peter Ellegaard Track Team powered by SANA) picking up the intermediate sprint at the 36.5km mark in Frederikssund from the group of five that also included Anders Foldager (Jayco AlUla), Rune Herregodts (UAE Team Emirates-XRG), William Blume Levy (Uno-X Mobility) and Mads Andersen (Swatt Club).

On and off, light rain fell during the race, creating slick conditions and causing early-race crashes involving De Lie and then Manlio Moro (Movistar Team), while Sam Bennett (Pinarello Q36.5 Pro Cycling) abandoned the race.

Uno-X Mobility, Lidl-Trek and Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe took on the bulk of the pace-setting at the front of the field, holding the gap at a manageable two minutes.

Anders Foldager (Jayco AlUla), Rune Herregodts (UAE Team Emirates-XRG), William Blume Levy (Uno-X Mobility) and Mads Andersen (Swatt Club) (Image credit: Getty Images)

Rodenberg rolled through to take another full set of points in the next intermediate sprint in Ganløse at the 127km mark, but was dropped from the breakaway before reaching the finishing circuits, and eventually caught with 55km remaining.

The four riders continued on, but the gap began to fall to just over a minute as more of the top sprint teams joined in the chase with Unibet Rose Rockets, Alpecin-Premier Tech and Soudal-QuickStep pulling the peloton onto the first lap of the finishing circuits.

Nearing the end of the penultimate lap, the breakaway still had 20 seconds on the chasing peloton, but a crash took down several riders in the field on a tight corner with 18km to go, causing the peloton to split apart.

The main field was then reduced to roughly 30 riders as Alpecin-Premier Tech and Decathlon CMA CGM continued to lead the bunch into the final lap of the race, while the rest of the teams looked around to determine whether and where their sprinters were positioned amid the chaos.

The disorganisation in the main field may have helped the breakaway to hold onto a slim 10 seconds with 4km to go, but the quartet worked well enough together that their gap held into the final corners of the circuit.

As Foldager, Herregodts, Blume Levy and Andersen swung onto the last straightaway, they looked over their shoulders to see the field, led by Netcompany-Ineos, in pursuit, making the catch just before the sprinters launched for the finish line.