Team Milram captain Linus Gerdemann has won the opening stage of the 2010 Tirreno-Adriatico (March 10-16). The 27-year-old impressed with his second win of the young 2010 season. Gerdemann crowned a nearly perfect finale for Team MILRAM, which prevented the expected mass sprint finish with attacks from Fabian Wegmann and Niki Terpstra.  The MILRAM captain attacked on the last of the 148 kilometers from Livorno to Rosignano Solvay together with second-place finisher Pablo Lastras (Caisse d'Epargne), Matti Breschel (Saxo Bank) and fourth-placed Luca Paolini (Acqua & Sapone), giving his rivals no chance in the sprint.  With the stage win, Gerdemann also took the overall lead in the race.

"An outstanding finale from our whole team," said Christian Henn, Team MILRAM's Directeur Sportif.  "We continued to attack at the decisive moment, which made our chance for the victory possible.  Linus was very attentive and won the stage for us very cleverly.  All in all, it was a very hard and strenuous day for everyone in the field.  The temperatures were only between three and six degrees, it rained at the start and the streets were wet the whole way."

At the start of the 45th edition of the „race between the seas", a soloist led much of the way.  Ukranian Dimitri Grabovskyy (ISD-Neri) was able to resist the peloton for a long time, and was caught again with only 15 km to go.  From there on further breakaways ruled the day.  The first attack came fom Pabol Urtasun (Euskaltel), followed by one from Milram's Fabian Wegmann, which caused the peloton to pick up speed.  Wegmann was caught again quickly, and then Milram's Niki Terpstra took off.

Just when Terpstra and Urtasun were caught with just over one km to go, the four-man group around Gerdemann attacked from the peloton.  Gerdemann stayed at the back of the group for much of the sprint, and so had the energy needed to make it across the finish line first.

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