Lewis wins stage 2 from break

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Craig Lewis (Champion System Pro Cycling Team) just missed out on taking the yellow jersey in a suspenseful stage 2 at the Tour de Beauce Wednesday, holding off the peloton and beating his surviving breakaway companion after spending 120km up the road.

Thanks to the time bonuses on the line and in the intermediate sprints, Lewis all but erased the 45-second deficit he had on overall leader Francisco Mancebo (Competitive Cyclist Racing Team) going into the stage, and now sits in second place just three seconds down.

"I wasn't thinking about (the overall standings) too much," said WorldTour veteran Lewis after the stage – his first victory of the 2012 season. "I figured when we made it over the last KOM (with 30 km to go) with about two minutes then we could hold it to the finish."

Lewis broke away about 40km into the 160km stage with Canadian Jamie Sparling (Raleigh-GAC) and James Williamson (Bike NZ-Pure Black Racing). Up to that point the race – which started under light rain – had averaged more than 43 km/h under repeated attacks that weren't allowed to go anywhere. But as soon as the trio got a small gap the peloton eased up and some riders took a nature break.

Under increasingly sunny skies the gap quickly grew to about three-and-a-half minutes before Competitive Cyclist went to the front to keep a lid on things as the race ground over the huge rollers around Thetford-Mines.

"Controlling the gap at three or four minutes, that was OK for us," said Mancebo, who made sure he stayed near the front throughout the stage.

The breakaway riders – who battled strong winds all day– began to lose ground after the feed zone at the 100km mark, but still had 2:30 going into the final KOM. With the gradient reaching 15% on the rough roads, the trio split up, with Lewis in the lead. Williamson soon dropped back to the pack, but Sparling caught back on and joined forces with Lewis to drive to the line as hard as they could, with Lewis doing the bulk of the work.

"We all shared the workload until the last 30km or so, and then it was just the Craig Lewis show," said an exhausted Sparling after the finish.

With 20km remaining the gap was just 1:35, but it turned out to be too much for the disorganized peloton to close.

"We were waiting for the teams of the sprinters to chase, but in the end it was just Team Type 1," said Mancebo.

With two laps remaining on the 3.5-km finishing circuit the gap was still a minute, and Lewis took the win by a few bike lengths over Sparling and 29 seconds ahead of the peloton, led in by Alexander Serebryakov (Team Type 1-Sanofi).

"I can't believe it – three guys, and there was so much wind," said Sparling.

On Thursday the riders face the queen stage – 164km from Ville St-Georges to the highest road in Quebec atop Mont-Mégantic at the end of an eight-kilometre climb to over 1,100m. Mancebo will be looking to gain enough time to fend off his key GC rivals in the next day's time trial, which will favour 2007 and 2010 winner Ben Day (United HealthCare) and 2008 winner Svein Tuft (Canadian national team).

Mancebo will also have to look out for Canadian Sebastian Salas (Optum p/b Kelly Benefit Strategies), the Amgen Tour of California KOM winner. Salas, 24, was third on the Mégantic stage last year in only his second year of racing, and by all accounts he's improved dramatically.

"Tomorrow if I feel good it's OK," Mancebo said. "If not, it's no fault of the team."

Race notes:

Sebastian Salas was scraped up pretty badly in his crash in the sprint yesterday but his team director Eric Wohlberg says he's doing fine. "He was sore this morning but he's OK," he said. Salas' American teammate – and KOM leader – Ken Hanson helped bandage him up this morning. As a sprinter, Hanson has lot of experience dealing with crash damage and travels with a "crash bag" of bandages. "That's the great thing about our team – always helping each other," Wohlberg said.

Race organizers mistakenly gave the best young rider jersey to the wrong guy Tuesday. Mexican Flavio De Luna (SpiderTech p/b C10) was awarded the jersey on the podium, but he's just third in the standings, behind Malaysian Adiq Othman (Champion System) and Canadian Hugo Houle (SpiderTech p/b C10). Othman was given the jersey before the second stage.

Meanwhile, De Luna is chasing another prize: the KOM jersey. He scored points on both classified climbs today and closed to within a point of Hanson in the standings.

This is the first Tour de Beauce for Craig Lewis, who raced on the WorldTour for Team HTC for the last three years. The 27-year-old American said he's still getting used to the different level of organization and style of racing at the Continental level. "It's tougher to read a race, but it seems to be working out for me," he said.

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