Tour of Britain: Renshaw wins stage 2 in Llandudno

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Mark Renshaw (Omega Pharma-QuickStep) won the field sprint into Llandudno during stage 2 at the Tour of Britain on Monday. The Australian rider was given the green light to go for the sprint while his team's primary sprinter, Mark Cavendish, recovers from a crash that happened during stage 1. Ben Swift (Team Sky) sprinted in for second and Sam Bennett (Team NetApp-Endura) was third.

"It was a great stage and a great victory, the first one of the year," Renshaw said. "We came here to work for Mark Cavendish and he had a bad crash yesterday, so he was recovering a little today."

Renshaw has taken over the overall race lead from stage 1 winner Marcel Kittel (Giant Shimano). Swift is sitting in second place, four seconds back, and Nicola Ruffoni (Bardiani-CSF) is in third, six seconds back.

With the category 2 climb soaring on the Welsh coastline at Great Orme just shy of 6km from the finish, it was surprising to see a bunch sprint finish in Llandudno. The day's breakaway with mountains leader Mark McNally (An Post-Chainreaction), who won the first two climbs, had been caught by the top, and attacks flew on the breathtaking plummet to the finish line.

Pablo Lastras (Movistar) was the last rider caught out of the group that also included Lasse Norman Hansen (Garmin-Sharp), Ian Bibby (Madison Genesis), Robert Partridge (Giordana) and Christopher Lawless (Great Britain), and at the top he was counter-attacked by Sylvain Chavanel (IAM Cycling) and Michal Kwiatkowski (Omega Pharma-Quickstep).

When Kwiatkowski was caught inside 3km to go, his team rallied together to set up Renshaw, using Niki Terpstra for the final acceleration.

They were nearly foiled by a late attack by Alex Dowsett (Movistar), but he was caught only a few hundred meters from the line, and while Swift hit out first, it was Renshaw who had the right timing to win the stage.

"It was quite a fast final 30 kilometers," Renshaw said. "Especially the last 5 kilometers with that kind of a descent. It was quite exciting for the public, I'm sure it was really spectacular to watch. I had good legs after the Tour de France, so with a bit of good timing in the sprint it worked out quite well."

It was Renshaw's first win of the year, and his first for the Omega Pharma-Quickstep team, which has now racked up 59 wins this road season.

"It's great to reward the team with my first win in an OPQS jersey this year. I'm also proud of the fact that we had three riders in the top 10 today, with Michal Kwiatkowski and Niki Terpstra doing well in the final kilometers with me. Kwiatkowski came onto my wheel in the final. That shows what kind of class rider he is. He knows if he's on my wheel it's one more bike length for whoever is trying to come behind. He's a class rider and those kinds of tactics help teams win races. It's great to win, it's a fantastic feeling."

Renshaw dedicated the victory especially to Cavendish, who sat out the sprint due to an injury to his leg caused by his stage 1 crash.

"If Cav is not feeling great, he'll tell us. Today he let us know and it was an opportunity for me. I'd like to dedicate this to him as he's one of the biggest champions of the sport. I came to this team to help him, and even when he's not 100 percent I'd still dedicate my effort to help him. I'm glad I could step up and execute the sprint in his place, and I'll continue to support him and my other OPQS teammates in the next days."

The day's breakaway escaped early in the 200.8km stage, after Dowsett had claimed the first intermediate sprint at kilometer 9.7. McNally extended his lead in the mountains classification with two summit sprints in the latter half of the stage, while Bibby and Hansen shared the sprint bonuses.

Their efforts were no threat to the sprint classification lead of Sonny Colbrelli (Bardiani CSF), who holds a three point lead in the standings, while Swift's second place earned him the points classification lead.

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