Tag: tour of britain 2012

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Tiernan-Locke Wins ToB

Tour of BritainGB’s year of unparalleled cycling success continued today with Endura Racing’s Jonathan Tiernan-Locke becoming the first Brit to win the Tour of Britain in 19 years. Going into today’s final stage (147.7km, Reigate to Guildford) with a headwind of 18 seconds 27-year-old Tiernan-Locke had looked in contention for several days and even Mark Cavendish’s textbook Sky set up and launch stage win – his third of the tour – didn’t distract. If rumours are correct today could potentially have been Cav’s final outing in Team Sky colours ahead of a hotly anticipated move, but who will fill his pedals? Again if rumours are to be believed… Tiernan-Locke.

 

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Cav Takes ToB Lead

The Tour of Britain keeps on getting better for Team Sky’s Mark Cavendish; capitalising on yesterday’s win he took top spot again today on Stage 4 (156km, Carlisle to Blackpool) in a time of 3:51:33, holding off Garmin’s Steele Von Hoff to second and GreenEDGE’s Leigh Howard for third. The victory on this wet and wild stage now means he leads the General Classification with a total time of 17:07:51, knocking Howard back to second. Stage 4 proved to be a near-identical event to Stage 3 with Team Sky dominating and setting Cav up for the perfect sprint finish.

 

With the route often a stone’s throw from Bradley Wiggins home turf, Cavendish confirmed afterwards it had proven an advantage, commenting: ‘Bradley lives not far from Blackpool and the route included a lot of the roads he uses for training. He told us it was very open, and very windy, and he knew the exact place we should go on the attack. It was the perfect call.’

 

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Cavendish Takes Tour of Britain Stage

Having crashed and lost out to team mate Luke Rowe on the first day of the Tour of Britain and been beaten to the line by GreenEDGE’s Leigh Howard on the second, Mark Cavendish finally had his moment on today’s ToB stage (161.4km Jedburgh to Dumfries) winning in a time of 3:54:30. In a near-perfect set up from Team Sky, with Bradley Wiggins and Jeremy Hunt working tirelessly to rein in the breakaway in the final kilometres, Cav did what he does best and sprinted to victory.

 

Speaking post-race he said, ‘I’m delighted. We tried a few different things yesterday which didn’t quite work out, so (Sports Director) Servais Knaven told us to keep things simple today and go for the sprint… We always had those breakaway riders in our sights. Christian, Brad and Jez all did massive pulls and were able to line it out and bring everything back together at just the right time. It was great for me to be able to sit on the wheel while they were doing all the work.’

 

Leigh Howard (Orica-GreenEDGE) maintains overall lead going into tomorrow’s 156km Stage 4, Carlisle to Blackpool.