Tour of Britain - Round Up

This year’s Tour of Britain boasted a high quality including Olympic champions Bradley Wiggins and Ed Clancy.

Stage one brought the riders from Rochdale to 132km up the road to the seaside town of Blackpool. Despite the tough nature of the course it was sprinter Andre Greipel who opened his account with victory. Saxo Bank rider Jonny Bellis only managed 54km before he was forced to climb off the bike. The Manxman is coming back to form after suffering from a near fatal accident in Italy last September.

Team Sky’s Greg Henderson gave the home crowd something to cheer in stage 2 about when he beat Heinrich Haussler and Michael Albasini to the line. The Kiwi was joined in the 18-man breakaway by teammates Wiggins and Geraint Thomas.

The home knowledge helped them on a course that was much more difficult than it looked on the profile.

HTC Columbia was back on the top step and back in yellow after stage 3 with Albasini crossing the line first. The stage was difficult from the start and several riders were dropped immediately the race was de-neutralised. Albasini became the third man to wear the yellow jersey in three stages.

Vacansoleil put on a big show in stage four finishing first and second after the pair launched an attack on the final climb of the day.

Organisers in a Panic
Organisers were left in a panic when the persistent attacks of Dan Martin meant that over two-thirds of the peloton fell quickly behind. The dropped riders were soon outside the 20% allowed time limit and frantic phone calls were made to bosses of the teams to try an increase the speed of the second peloton.

In the end the organisers decided to overlook the riders that came in past the time limit a difficult stage added to the rider’s troubles.

Stage 5 finished in the legendary music venue of Glastonbury and it was Italian Marco Frapporti who struck the right cords. Bradley Wiggins tried to use his Olympic pursuiting skills to catch him up but he just fell short of the mark 13 seconds behind.

Frapporti made a break with the perpetual motion machine Dan Martin but managed to lose the Irishman 5km before the finish.


Even though he had spent most of the previous day on the front Tony Martin had to pull out of the race with illness. His team mate Albasini held on to the lead despite spending most of the night awake feeling sick.

Back to the flat for stage six and it was Andre Greipel who was on form on his way to win the second stage in a week. There was not much challenge for the German in the final sprint finishing well ahead of Borut Bozic; who moved in to second in the GC with the result.

Bozic Finally Wins
Bozic finally got his name on the board when he beat Henderson in an uphill sprint to the finish line to win stage seven. Any early break from Tom Murray and Pieter Jacobs broke the peloton up and even though they pulled it back together before the end it was ever going to be a sprint finish with the long drag to the line.

The final stage in London was a doubly good day for the HTC Columbia team as Greipel took the victory and Albasini went home with the yellow jersey.

A five man breakaway formed on the circuit that had to be redirected due to the Pope’s visit, but they were only able to pull out a 30 second gap. The HTC train formed on the front of the peloton and Mark Renshaw gave the perfect lead out to let the German take his third victory of the tour.

Albasini came across the line in the bunch to win the Tour 1’05” ahead of Bozic.

Results
General Classification
1. Michael Albasini 29:23:47
2. Borut Bozic 1:05
3. Greg Henderson 1:10
Points
1. Greg Henderson 74
2. Borut Bozic 68
3. Koen De Kort 50
King of the Mountains
1. Johnny Hoogerland 56
2. Richie Porte 45
3. Wout Poels 31