Nils Politt threw himself into the finish with his last strength and shook his head slightly disappointed when he looked at the scoreboard.

At the start of the German tour in the cultural city of Weimar, the defending champion was only beaten by the victorious time trial world champion Filippo Ganna and the Dutchman Bauke Mollema.

Politt was a tiny three seconds short of first place on Wednesday.

“It was extremely difficult.

That was three minutes full in the face.

That hurt,” said Politt after the 2.6 kilometers in the city of Goethe.

As last year's winner, the Cologne native with starting number one was the last driver to roll off the ramp.

“It was special to start the race with starting number one.

I wanted to finish at the front and I succeeded.”

In the next two days, Politt has a good chance of conquering the leader's red jersey.

He has the support of his Bora-hansgrohe team.

"He will have a free role in the first few days and we want to organize the race offensively because we don't have a sprinter with us," said sporting director Rolf Aldag.

Buchmann looks “rather to the mountain finish”

As expected, Emanuel Buchmann played no role in the fight for the day's victory.

The tour specialist lost 17 seconds to leader Ganna, but is still one of the favorites for overall victory.

"For my standards, that was pretty good.

It's not my specialty.

I'm more looking at the mountain finish," said Buchmann.

Simon Geschke, who finished 91st, also looks at them.

The 36-year-old fell the morning before the prologue, but only suffered abrasions on his left arm.

Former Tour winner Egan Bernal was 73rd at the same time as Buchmann. The 25-year-old uses the race to collect more racing kilometers.

Bernal fell badly during training in January and broke more than 20 bones.

Last week he completed the first race after the accident with the Tour of Denmark.

For Phil Bauhaus, the tour was over before it even started.

The sprinter tested positive for the corona virus a few hours before the prologue.

As his team Bahrain-Victorious announced, all other drivers and team members tested negative.

Because of the short distance, sprinters like Bauhaus were also expected to place well.

This year's Germany tour runs over five days and 710 kilometers from Weimar to Stuttgart.

The king's stage starts on Saturday in Freiburg and ends on the 1200 meter high Schauinsland.

The first stage on Thursday runs within Thuringia over 171.7 kilometers from Weimar to Meiningen.

With the addition of a day to the race, the fourth edition of the Tour, following its reintroduction, makes a step up towards the week-long version held from 1999 to 2008.

The establishment of the race took place under difficult conditions due to the corona pandemic.

"Meanwhile, the response is getting better and better and cities and municipalities are coming to us and want to be part of the tour," said sports director Fabian Wegmann to "t-online.de".