Swift quickest on stage 2 of Tour of Poland

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Team Sky's Ben Swift took out the bunch sprint on the second stage of the Tour de Pologne. Swift's team led him through the final turns perfectly, with British champion Ian Stannard and Mathew Hayman providing the final launching pad for his teammate's triumph over Liquigas-Cannondale's Elia Viviani and Tom Boonen (Omega Pharma-Quickstep).

"It was unbelievable at the end; (Juan Antonio) Flecha did a hell of a lot of work to move us all into position around that circuit and then (Ian) Stannard just went for it - I think the cobbles excited him! And then Mat Hayman did a massive turn to get me almost right to the line," Swift said on teamsky.com.

The victory made up for a disappointing opening stage in which Swift had a flat tire and was unable to contest the finishing sprint. "I was quite disappointed yesterday because I’d done all the work to get over the last climb and then right at the very top I punctured; it’s always hard to look at those results when you know you should have been in with a good chance of winning."

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Because none of today's top three were present in the front group on the opening stage, Viviani's teammate Moreno Moser retained the race leader's jersey over Michal Kwiatkowski (Omega Pharma-Quickstep) and Lars Boom (Rabobank). Moser could not contest the sprint because of a crash, but finished on the same time as Swift.

“Everything went according to plan, it was supposed to be a stage for sprinters, and so it was,” said Moser. “In the first part of the race the breakaway took off and we stayed cool. Then in the final circuit the battle heated up in the group of sprinting teams, everyone wants to stay out front but this isn’t possible.

"I got caught up in a fall in the second of three laps, I took a hit to my shoulder but fortunately I managed to get going again and catch up to the head group. Tomorrow there will be a more challenging stage, I think it could be suited to my skills; I’m going to try and hang on to the jersey and race like I did in the first stage at Karpacz”.

The 239.4km stage featured a four-man breakaway well represented by the home country riders: the Polish national team had both Lukasz Bodnar and Damian Walczak present alongside fellow Pole Adrian Kurek (Utensilnord Named) and Italian Diego Caccia (Farnese Vini-Selle Italia). The leaders broke free just five kilometers into the stage, but their leash was kept tight as Bodnar nudged his way into the virtual race lead as well as mopping up three time bonuses along the way in the intermediate sprints.

After the third sprint with just over 50km remaining, Bodnar dropped back to the peloton leaving the remaining three to battle ahead. Caccia took the sole mountain prime but did not threaten the lead in that classification of Orica-GreenEdge's Daniel Teklehaimanot.

The leaders were swept up with precision by the sprinter's teams, with Rabobank attempting to form a train for Lars Boom, however they were caught out by the turns in the finishing kilometer and Team Sky took to the front to deliver Swift to the stage victory.

"It was brilliant. We made the call to save our legs for the lead out – if we needed to we were going to put someone on the front but the guys did a perfect job looking after me and got me right into position," said Swift.

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