Poland: Vakoc surprises the peloton to win alone

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Petr Vakoc (Omega Pharma-QuickStep) surprised the peloton during stage two the Tour de Pologne by winning alone and taking the race leader's yellow jersey in the capital Warsaw.

The 22-year-old from the Czech Republic was in the break of the day during the flat 226km stage and then managed to stay away alone and outfox the peloton.

Australia's Michael Matthews (Orica-GreenEdge) won the bunch sprint 21 seconds behind, celebrating with his arms in the air and thinking he had won. Boris Vallee (Lotto Belisol) finished third with most of the peloton in the same time. However Vakov had preceded them all and also took the race leader's yellow jersey form stage one winner Yauheni Hutarovich (Ag2r-La Mondiale), who slipped to second at 27 seconds. Roman Makin (Rusvelo) is third overall at 31 seconds.

It was Vakov first win with Omega Pharma-Quick Step after finishing second behind teammate Zdenek Stybar in the Czech national road race championships in June. He spent time at the UCI World Cycling Centre and a season in France before joining the Etixx-iHNed feeder team in 2013. Last year he won six races, including the Under 23 Vuelta a Madrid two-day race.

Vakoc went on the attack with Polish riders Bartlomiej Matysiak (CCC Polsat) and Przemyslaw Kasperkiewicz (Poland). The peloton was slow to organise a chase and with the Ag2r-La Mondiale team of Hutarovich also not working on the front, the trio still had a lead of six minutes with 50km to go.

Belkin, Katusha, Lotto Belisol, Orica-GreenEdge, Tinkoff-Saxo and Giant-Shimano started do some work and chase on the outskirts of Warsaw but it was too late and Vakoc took flight alone and stayed away on the three laps of the city centre circuit.

Matthews admitted that he thought he was sprinting for victory but took solace from the work of his teammates and his finishing speed.

"I honestly thought we were sprinting for the win after we'd caught the rest of the break with 30km to go," the Australian said.

It was an amazing ride by the Omega Pharma-Quick Step rider. We didn’t know that he was away and my radio wasn't working. It's our first race in a while after altitude training and so it's good training for us to go up against some really fast sprinters, second is still a good result for us."

The Tour of Poland continues with another flat stage on Tuesday with the 174km third stage from Kielce to Rzeszów.

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