Team Sky's Simon Gerrans notched a top 10 finish in the first stage of the Tour du Limousin as he began his build up to the Vuelta a España.

The Australian was forced out by injury after a torrid Tour de France but has made a full recovery from a broken arm, underlined by his encouraging start on the opening 193.1km trek from Limoges to Boussac.

He led home Team Sky in eighth position, behind winner Jéremie Galland (Saur-Sojasun).

Galland won a bunch sprint in Boussac, just getting the better of Jose Joaquin Rojas (Caisse d'Épargne) and Michael Morkov (Saxo Bank).

The stage had seen a three-man breakaway stretch their advantage to over 16 minutes at one point but with Team Sky's Kjell Carlström playing a key role driving the peloton, that lead tumbled in the second half of the day.

That was the catalyst for one of the three riders, Stéphané Augé of Cofidis, to launch a solo attack and though he was eventually reeled in on the final climb up the Côte de Touix Ste Croix, the time bonuses he earned left him in second on the general classification behind Galland.

Team Sky's Serge Pauwels, Dario Cioni, Thomas Löfkvist and Morris Possoni all finished in the lead 64-man group with Gerrans and were credited with the same time as the winner.

Big performance from Carlström

We caught up with Sports Director Dan Hunt afterwards to get his insight as to how the stage panned out and he explained: "It was up and down all day - nothing too severe but still pretty wearing. The break went early on after about six kilometres and initially the peloton was fairly happy to let it go, knowing that there were a couple of cat-2 climbs towards the end.

"The gap was reported at anything between five and nine minutes but then the next time check we got was 16 minutes so I decided that we'd put Kjell on the front to help start to bring that back. He rode with three other riders for the next 100 or so kilometres and did a great job for the team. It was a massive effort from him and a huge show of his own individual strength and condition.

"The race then split up on the cat-2 climb with about 50km to the finish. After that the remnants of the break got caught on the final climb and we just lost Russell Downing from the front group but he was sick last week so it was always going to be a big ask of him.

"From then on it was full gas to what proved a slightly messy sprint finish and the most important thing for us from today was that Dario and Thomas lost no time on GC."

Key stages to come

With that last point in mind Hunt is looking forward to the next three days of the four-stage race.

He added: "The team rode really well as a unit today - that was something Thomas Löfkvist highlighted afterwards - they were always together and I think we're second now on the team classification.

"We've got the time trial tomorrow which is a bit of a natural selection process and from there we'll have a better understanding as to who is in contention for GC. And if we need to ride Thursday or Friday's stages to either protect that or to help someone get into it, then that's what we'll do."