Victory for Rapha Condor's Darren Lapthorne in Canada

Story posted June 11, 2009

The quietly spoken former Australian champion, Darren Lapthorne has won stage 2 of the UCI ranked Tour de Beauce in Canada in some style. The 'man in black' got himself in a break of three and they stayed away for 140 kilometres gaining a maximum lead of five minutes until the yellow jersey team of BMC started to bring the leaders back.

On a stage plagued with rain and fog, it was Lapthorne who had finished 4 minutes down on stage 1 and thus having the opportunity of being given some freedom by the race’s leader, who started the move to be joined by one rider and then a little later, another and the trio then forged ahead until they got to a wooden bridge where they were stopped by race officials.

Darren Lapthorne

For a long time, they had to wait for the bunch to arrive on the scene of a bridge deemed to slippery to race across. Once the bridge had been crossed, the leaders were allowed to restart their race and the bunch also restarted at the appropriate time behind them.

It wasn't until the gap was down to 30 seconds that the Rapha Condor rider made his next key move, attacking with 2k to go and despite the bunch bearing down on him, held on to win by 10 seconds to give him his first major victory in the Rapha Condor colours. After the stage, Rapha Condor's Tom Southam remains in 6th overall and with a mountain top finish on stage 3, it may be his time to make up time on the general classification

1. Darren Lapthorne (Aus) Rapha Condor   4.01.22

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