Swift takes another stage of Tour of Poland

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British speedster Ben Swift (Team Sky) took his second stage of the 2012 Tour of  Poland in the long, slow uphill drag to the line in Zakopane at the end of the 163.1km stage from Rabka Zdrój.

Swift had to fight hard to get onto terms with Liquigas-Cannondale's Elia Viviani, who looked set to be riding to the win but fell just short at the line, much to his very apparent frustration as he banged on his bars.

Pim Ligthart (Vacansoleil-DCM) and Giovanni Visconti (Movistar) followed him across the line ahead of Rabobank's Michael Matthews, who hit out far too early and faded to fifth.

Race leader Michal Kwiatkowski (Omega Pharma-Quickstep) came across in sixth to hold onto the yellow jersey over Viviani's teammate Moreno Moser and Lars Boom of Rabobank.

"I’m really happy with the result. It was quite a long sprint and I had to go really early as I saw that (Michael) Matthews and (Elia) Viviani had a good gap," Swift said to TeamSky.com.

"I knew that the form was good coming into the race but I’ve had a little bit of bad luck along the way. I had the puncture on the first stage and then I got the win which was really nice. Yesterday I was quite disappointed as the guys did such a fantastic job. To get beat on the line was disappointing, not only for myself but for the guys after they’d done such a good job. Today it was nice to get another win and pay them back."

The stage began with the compulsory early breakaway, this time it was made of Mikhail Ignatiev (Katusha), Mickael Delage (FDJ-BigMat), Bert De Backer (Argos-Shimano) and Rafaeo Andriato (Farnese Vini-Selle Italia).

The foursome opened up a gap of four minutes on the peloton, but with Omega Pharma-Quickstep setting the pace, they were kept well within reach for the chase.

Delage claimed the maximum points atop the first climb but on the descent, Ignatiev rode away and continued a daring solo attack for the next 70km, taking the next three climbs before finally coming unglued on the penultimate mountain at Glodówka.

The trio continued to chase two minutes behind Ignatiev, with Delage taking the most mountain points, but neither rider in the end could steal the title of best climber from Orica-GreenEdge's Daniel Teklehaimanot, who, as the Andriato and De Backer were left behind by Delage on the fourth climb with 43km to go, smartly mopped up the remaining points behind Ignatiev and Delage.

Delage threw in the towel ahead of the sprint 9km later, but the raging Russian ahead kept going until 25km was left in the stage when he finally surrendered.

There was a counter attack from Jan Bakelandts (RadioShack-Nissan) and Maciej Bodnar (Katusha) before the top of the penultimate climb, and the pair were joined thereafter by Ian Stannard (Sky) and Jaroslaw Marycz (Team Saxo Bank - Tinkoff Bank). However, Bakelandts left them all behind on the run to the finish.

The Belgian stayed clear until the final ascent with 3.2km remaining, which was won by Javier Moreno (Movistar). It was then time for the sprinter's teams to heat up the pace, but the finish was highly unpredictable and several riders hit out far too soon for the difficult approach. Swift proved to be the most patient and timed his effort perfectly to steal the stage win from the grasp of Viviani.

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