Weening wins Tour of Poland

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Pieter Weening (Orica-GreenEdge) emerged to claim final overall victory at the Tour de Pologne while Bradley Wiggins (Sky) scored his first win of the season in the concluding time trial in Krakow.

Weening began the final stage in 5th place overall, 27 seconds down on the yellow jersey of Christophe Riblon (Ag2r-La Mondiale) but he proved the strongest of the overall contenders in the 37 kilometre test and duly took the overall honours.

The Dutchman received an early indication that he was on track at the midway point, when he came through the intermediate check with the 5th fastest time overall and learned that he had already recouped enough time to leapfrog Sergio Henao (Sky) and Rafal Majka (Saxo-Tinkoff) to move up to provisional third overall.

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Weening reached the finish line 1:44 down on the flying Wiggins – good enough for 6th on the stage – and then had the luxury of sitting back to watch how his rivals for the yellow jersey would fare over the final part of the course.

As anticipated, both Henao and Majka conceded further ground over the closing kilometres to finish the race in 4th and 5th place overall, respectively. For his part, Jon Izaguirre (Euskaltel-Euskadi) put in a fine time trial to take 7th place on the stage but he was unable to limit his losses sufficiently to Weening and had to settle for second place overall, 13 seconds down.

The yellow jersey Riblon was the last man to finish, and as he entered the technical final kilometre, the Frenchman must already have realised that overall victory was ebbing away from him. Winner at Alpe d’Huez at the Tour de France and atop the Passo Pordoi on the Tour of Poland’s opening weekend in Italy, Riblon had perhaps gone to the well once too often in recent weeks, and he had to settle for a disappointed third place overall, 16 seconds behind Weening.

Wiggins back to winning ways

In the battle for stage honours, Bradley Wiggins returned to winning ways over a year on from his last victory, which came at the Olympic Games time trial in London. The Englishman began his test aiming at the provisional best time of Fabian Cancellara (RadioShack-Leopard), who had clocked a fine time of 47:32.

Wiggins looked comfortable from the moment he rolled down the start ramp and settled immediately into his familiar high cadence. Unlike at the Giro d’Italia time trial at Saltara – incidentally, his only other individual time trial this season – there were no mechanical mishaps, and Wiggins duly crossed the finish line with a time some 56 seconds quicker than Cancellara and 1:14 faster than Taylor Phinney (BMC).

After abandoning the Giro d’Italia and then missing the Tour de France due to injury, Wiggins is building the second half of his campaign around the individual time trial at the world championships in Florence, and he can take great encouragement from his first rehearsal in Poland. Following his difficulties so far this season, Wiggins will be hoping that his Krakow victory marks a significant turning point.

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