Abu Dhabi: The sun was beating down hard all through the day and temperatures even shot over the 40 degree mark, but that didn’t stop Italian Andrea Guardini of Astana Pro Team from winning the truncated first stage of the inaugural Abu Dhabi Tour on Thursday.

Guardini won the ride from Qasr Al Sarab to Madinat Zayed via Liwa, brushing aside the challenge of Etixx-Quick Step’s Tom Boonen, Tinkoff Saxo’s Daniele Bennati and SkyDive Dubai’s Andrea Palini to the tape in a bunch sprint. He clocked 4hrs 21min 11sec.

Race organisers, wary of the worrisome heat that slowed the peloton down considerably in the first hour, were forced to cut short the 11km loop around the finish at Madinat Zayed.

“Other riders suffer in the heat, but I like these conditions and I knew that I could do a really good job today,” said an elated Guardini, who now owns the red and green jerseys for being overall leader and on top of the points classification.

Songezo Jim of MTN-Qhubeka will wear the white jersey as top young rider.

Guardini — who had previously won one stage at the Tour of Oman, four at the Tour de Langkawi, one at the Tour de Picardie and one at the World Ports Classic — added: “Coming into the final kilometre, there was confusion in the peloton. The last curve was at 500 metres and I went around it in third position. I knew that I was too near the front, so I held back.

Suffering

“Luckily I was close to Bennati. When Peter [Sagan] kicked, he pulled Bennati with him at around the 250-metre mark. Peter sportingly left the corridor along the barriers open and I came through,” said Guardini.

Boonen, who has a record 22 stage wins and four overall titles at the Tour of Qatar, said he suffered in the heat.

“It was impossible, it went too far. At a certain point it was 45-plus degrees. It’s just impossible to race,” the Belgian said. “On the first small climbs my heartrate was 170-180, so was everybody else’s, without really pushing.

“You can ride in these conditions but you can’t race. The guys in the front just fell back one by one.”

Of the sprint finish, he added: “I came to the front way too early and I only have two guys here for the sprint. We rode straight past BMC and Greenedge. I was hoping that somebody would come in between us, but obviously everybody just let us do our thing. Eventually we made the final turn in first and second positions, which would have been fine if we had an extra man.”

German Paul Voss of the Bora-Argon 18 team, South African Jim, Italy’s Alessandro Bazzana, Australian William Clarke of Drapac Proffessional Cycling, and Mancebo made up the early breakaway.

The first intermediate sprint after 70.1km was won by Williams ahead of Bazzana and Mancebo, while Voss won the second after 101.5km.