Swift in pole position in Picardie

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Sky's Ben Swift claimed the second victory of his professional career and his first for his current team with victory in stage two of the Tour of Picardie on Saturday. The Briton sprinted to victory ahead of Allan Davis (Astana) and his own teammate, Russell Downing.

Swift credited his teammates for setting-up the finale for him. "It's all thanks to them really, the guys have been amazing. They did an awesome job with the lead-out and from what I hear there were only about ten guys left at the end," said Swift on the Team Sky website.

Sky's lead-out had followed a concerted chase by the peloton to pull back the day's four breakaway riders. Skil-Shimano, RadioShack, Astana and the Vacansoleil teams had borne most of the responsibility for retrieving the quartet, who escaped 55km into the 186km stage.

For the second stage in a row, Tristan Valentin (Cofidis) was part of the escape group. By day's end, the Frenchman would be rewarded for his aggressive riding with the outright lead in the mountains classification. He was joined on the attack by Sébastien Chavanel (Francaise des Jeux), Vladimir Gusev (Team Katusha) and Fabrice Jeandesboz (Saur-Sojasun).

The four maintain a solid lead, but by the time the race was approaching the 50km-to-go mark, their advantage had shrunk to 2:35. With his mountains lead assured, Valentin exited the breakaway, as did Jeandesboz. Chavanel and Gusev forged on ahead, but as the race entered its final loop of the finishing circuit, they too had been pulled back.

Several late race attacks were thwarted by the teams of the sprinters as they wound up the final 20km in good time. Some thirty riders remained together at the flamme rouge, but by the finish that group had been fractured even further.

A mechanical problem with his gears saw Swift bump against Davis in the finale. "Unfortunately I had a little incident with Allan Davis when I sort of fell sideways and banged into him. It was a complete accident and I apologised to him and he understands," said Swift.

Despite the hiccup, Swift was able to maintain his composure and sprinted away for his first victory of the season and his first since the 2009 Tour of Britain.

Swift also assumed the overall race lead from stage one winner Kenny van Hummel (Skil-Shimano). It is the first general classification lead of his career and he will head into the final stage with a 10 second lead over Davis. Downing sits in third, two seconds further back.

The young Briton also holds the leads in the points and young rider classification, with Valentin preventing a clean sweep, as he holds onto the polka dot top. 

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