Thomson claims second stage win

The Tour of Holy Hill was won in convincing fashion by in-form Jay Thomson of South Africa's MTN Energade team. The course was held in beautiful country-side over an 8.1-mile circuit that had rolling hills, several sharp climbs and very few flat sections. It is a course designed to weed out the weaker riders and the strongest prevails. The course finished next to Pike Lake where some riders were seen enjoying a swim after the racing. The Pro men's field contained over 70 riders and they raced 11 laps in the middle of a hot day for a total of 140 kilometres.

Since there were no sprinter's jersey points up for grabs in this race, the riders were gunning for overall honours. Several attacks went flying up the road from the gun, and an early move of four riders edged clear of the field. However, as the MTN Energade team did not have any representation up there, they were forced to take the initiative and set a steady tempo on the front of the field. This was a good move since it minimized the gap and they deployed the strategy of riding hard on front to make it look as if the catch would be made. However, just before this happened, MTN Energade launched Thomson to bridge across the gap on his own. According to MTN this move was done "to entice racing in the main field, but no one responded".

In the closing laps, Team MTN Energade was policing the front of the peloton to ensure any late attacks would not be successful. The breakaway of nine riders had split into two groups, with four escaping up the road, consisting of Andrew Bradley (Gourmetfein), Toby Marzot (Team Mountain Khakis), Reid Mumford (Kelly Benefit Strategies) and Jay Thomson (Team MTN). Thomson was the strongest of the four and took the win easily while Bradley and Marzot came in second and third respectively.

Yellow jersey holder and Australian national champion Bernard Sulzberger (Fly V Australia) won the sprint for fifth place over strong Taiwanese rider, Chun Kai Feng (Team Exustar). Ricardo Van Der Velde (Garmin-Slipstream) came in 7th while first local riders Duan Dickey (Iowa city Cycling Club) and Mathew Busche (ISCorp Cycling Team) were in the breakaway and finished 8th and 9th respectively. Sulzberger said that "it was not the best for us to have Jay up the road, but it was okay since I finished in the next group in fifth so he did not gain too many points on me. Plus, Dekker finished further down and Christoff, the other South African, did not finish so it was an okay result for me."

Ben Kersten, who is riding well in support of his Fly V Australia team, said, "It was a hard day out there. One hundred and forty kilometres and 11 times over those steep hills was difficult and I did a lot of work to help protect Bernie's series lead."