The 192 kilometres hilly first stage began in La Voulte-sur-Rhône in southern France.

Belgium's van Aert won silver in the men's road race at Tokyo 2020, and sprinted to a fourth career stage win on the Critérium du Dauphiné for Team Jumbo-Visma, finishing in 4 hours 37min 31sec.

Van Aert took the first yellow jersey and claimed a 10-second time bonus with his victory.

"Looking at the profile, we could expect a hard finale," Van Aert said afterwards.

"There were lots of teams interested in dropping sprinters.

"I was able to hang on and I felt good for the sprint so that’s really nice.

"On stages like today, I can already feel the good legs and that’s a pleasure.

"But you still have to beat guys like [Ethan] Hayter, who is doing really great this season.

"It was tough to pass him but in the end I did it so I’m happy, furthermore since I’ve been working on my sprint recently because I didn’t have the best sensations in this area during the spring.

"The coming stages suit me quite well so we’ll try to defend the jersey if possible, and hopefully I can hand it over to [team-mate] Primož [Roglič of Slovenia] this weekend, but it’s a lot of hard stages coming, difficult to control."

Hayter of Britain and Ineos Grenadiers came through in second, with the United States' Sean Quinn of EF Education-EasyPost rounding off the podium.

Tomorrow's second stage is also classed as hilly, running for 170km from Saint-Péray to Brives-Charensac.

The eight-stage race represents an important warm-up for the Tour de France, scheduled to begin on July 1.