Three-time Tour of Qatar champion Tom Boonen (Team Quick Step) won Monday's opening stage of the 2011 Tour of Qatar, his first major race since undergoing knee surgery following a crash in May 2010.

The Belgian Quickstep cyclist finished the 145.5 kilometer (90.4-mile) ride from the western city of Dukhan to Al Khor in the north in 2 hours, 59 minutes, 29 seconds.

Castelli-sponsored Team Garmin-Cervelo's Heinrich Haussler of Australia and countryman Mark Renshaw were next in the same time, while Boonen's teammate, Nikolas Maes, won the white jersey for the best young rider.

It was Boonen's 18th stage win in Qatar. He won the race in 2006, '08 and '09.

Boonen crashed in the 2010 Tour of Switzerland and skipped the Tour de France to have an operation in July. He missed most of last season, only taking part in a few low-key races toward the end of 2010.

"It is nice to win again, especially after the crash last year," Boonen said and added "It took me a long time to get back to this level. It took a lot of work for me to get fit again. Maybe it was the hardest thing of my career to get back to this level. It was very hard for me to win today. The win is good for the morale. It shows the work that I have done."

"At the start, I was going at 75 kilometers an hour. It was crazy - it was the wind. It was just what we see every year. The prediction was that it was going to be windy, and it was a headwind. But the wind turned a little bit and then it was a tail wind, so what happened was the group split up. We had to keep on going and that made the stage really hard," Boonen concluded.

After the 2.5 kilometer (1.6-mile) prologue on Saturday, Boonen now leads by 4 seconds over Renshaw and is 8 seconds in front of Fabian Cancellara of Switzerland.

Tomorrow's second stage is a 135.5 kilometer (84.2-mile) trek from the Camel Race Track in the east of Qatar before winding up at Doha Golf Club.