Great Britain’s Ben Swift finished in second place on today’s stage of the Friends Life Tour of Britain as Mark Renshaw of Omega Pharma-Quick Step took the stage in a sprint finish victory on Llandudno promenade.
Great Britain’s Ben Swift finished in second place on stage two of the Friends Life Tour of Britain as Mark Renshaw of Omega Pharma-Quick Step took the win on Llandudno promenade.
Australian Renshaw came past Team Sky’ Swift in the final 20 metres of the sprint with Mark Cavendish not contesting the finish after a crash on Sunday’s stage in Liverpool.
Great Britain’s Christopher Lawless was in a six-man breakaway consisting of Ian Bibby (Madison Genesis), Lasse Hansen (Garmin-Sharp), Rob Partridge (Giordana) and Pablo Lastras (Movistar) and King of the Mountains leader Mark McNally (An Post Chain Reaction) which had a lead of almost four minutes as its strongest point.
Things didn’t go Lawless’ way though at the rider suffered a front puncture with 36km to go. The Wigan born rider fought hard behind the team car to get back to the other five riders in the breakaway.
Lawless stayed with the group for a few kilometres until he was eventually mopped up by the main group with around 20km to go.
The lead dropped to under a minute with just under 12km to go and the peloton applied the pressure up the last gruelling climb up the Great Orme bringing the gap to just 30 seconds with just less than seven-kilometres to go. The peloton eventually absorbed the breakaway with just six kilometres to go.
After the climb of the Great Orme created significant splits in the peloton, Movistar's Alex Dowsett tried to make the break for victory but Sir Bradley Wiggins, working for Swift, led a group of chasers back on to their wheel on the approach to the line.
Ben Swift then made a break for the line but with Cavendish not in contention, Renshaw passed the Team Sky rider at the last moment and claimed the win.
While Swift missed out on victory, he could console himself with the points leaders' jersey.
"It was really hard out there," he said on the Team Sky website. "Bernie Eisel did the work of 10 men. He was one of the only guys pulling all day. The team were brilliant and sat together looking after each other.
"The finish was quite a tough one with a bit of a dangerous descent. You needed to be at the front and that's where we were. I just mistimed the sprint and went a little bit too early. We knew it was a bit of a tailwind finish but I could have waited for 50 or 100 metres more.
"I've got the points jersey now but our main goal this week is to try and win the yellow jersey with Bradley Wiggins. He's shown that he's in great form. Tomorrow is going to be the big test so we'll see how we handle that."
Earlier Ian Stannard abandoned the Tour of Britain after fracturing his scaphoid in a crash during yesterday’s opening stage in Liverpool. Great Britain’s Daniel Pearson also withdrew on today’s stage.
Tuesday's stage three travels 179.9 kilometres from Newtown to The Tumble, Abergavenny. Follow live updates from every stage of the Tour of Britain on the British Cycling website.
Results
Stage two
General classification after stage two
