Greg Henderson mastered testing windy conditions to claim victory for Team Sky on the opening stage of the 2010 Paris-Nice race in France.
The New Zealander triumphed in a sprint finish into Contres after a combination of cross- and head-winds took a punishing toll on the riders.
Henderson completed the 203.5-kilometre trek from Saint-Arnoult-en-Yvelines in a time of four hours 22 minutes and 17 seconds, just edging Grega Bole (Lampre) into second place by half a bike length.
Jeremy Galland (Saur-Sojasun) took the final place on the podium, while prologue winner Lars Boom (Rabobank) retained the overall leader's yellow jersey after finishing in among 15 riders that came home 17 second ahead of the peloton.
Germany's Jens Voigt is second in the general classification for Saxo Bank, with Britain's David Millar third overall for Garmin-Transitions.
Pre-race favourite and Tour de France champion Alberto Contador, fourth after yesterday's prologue, suffered an accident with less than 5km to go, but the Spaniard recovered to finish in the pack.
Henderson moved into a position to strike when he latched onto a 15-man breakaway group inside the final 10km and slowly picked his way onto the shoulders of the leaders.
The strength of the wind soon sorted the men from the boys and Henderson admitted he had to dig deep to get the better of Bole in a breathless sprint for the line.
"It was a headwind and it was like a slow-motion sprint and I was lucky to get it on the line," said Henderson, who has moved up to sixth place in the overall standings, 20 seconds behind Boom.
"It's beautiful to win here and to win such a beautiful race is real honour."
Henderson felt the victory underlined to the strides taken by the new Sky team in their debut season.
"It's a credit to the high management of the team who put the team together, they selected a group of great guys," he said.
"We're not here for show, we're here to win bike races and we've had a great start to the season."
Levi Leipheimer (RadioShack) was another big name to suffer a crash, although like Contador he resumed to finish in the peloton, 17 seconds down on the stage winner.