Tour of Britain: Hayter wins amid sprint chaos on stage 5

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Ethan Hayter (Ineos Grenadiers) bounced back into the overall lead at the Tour of Britain, beating the likes of Giacomo Nizzolo (Qhubeka-NextHash) and Mark Cavendish (Deceuninck-QuickStep) in a sprint finish in Warrington. 

The 22-year-old Briton, who ceded the lead to Wout van Aert (Jumbo-Visma) atop Great Orme the previous afternoon, regained the blue jersey after the Belgian champion was caught up in a late crash that made for a messy finale. 

Only a small group contested the final dash for the line, but Hayter still had to fend off the two fastest flat sprinters in the bunch in Nizzolo and Cavendish. The European champion challenged him on his left but didn’t have the power to get in front, while Cavendish appeared to find himself boxed between the two and didn’t open the taps completely. 

As the British veteran free-wheeled to the line, he was passed by Dan McLay (Arkéa-Samsic) and Luke Lamperti (Trinity Racing), who placed third and fourth, respectively. 

Cavendish’s lack of final acceleration perhaps had something to do with the fact that he had to dig deep uphill to close a gap that had opened between the first five riders and the rest of the bunch as a result of the crash, which occurred when two riders slipped out on a left-hand bend with 700 metres to go. One of them was Hayter’s teammate Owain Doull, but the Ineos leader squeezed through alongside Michal Kwiatkowski to emerge in a five-man group with Julian Alaphilippe (Deceuninck-QuickStep), Colin Joyce (Rally Cycling), and Lamperti. 

Cavendish dragged Nizzolo, McLay and a couple of riders over, but there was a gap back to the next group, which contained race leader Van Aert. The Belgian didn’t hit the deck himself, and was awarded the same time as Hayter given the incident occurred inside the final 3km, but the 10 bonus seconds for the win meant he had to hand back the jersey. 

Hayter now leads the race by eight seconds over Van Aert, with Alaphilippe still third but now at 19 seconds. 

“I actually backed off Doull. He’d started to drift and I was like ‘this is not good’, and he did crash. The bike was drifting right but I squeezed through on the barrier,” Hayter said. 

“I did a good sprint. Nizzolo was coming on my left and I could see a white jersey, but I just put it in the biggest gear and went flat-out to the line.”

How it unfolded

Stage 5 of the Tour of Britain would take the riders on a loop around leafy Cheshire before heading up towards the finish in Warrington at the base of the River Mersey. The 152.2km route featured three solid climbs in the opening half but the latter part of the parlours was largely flat and always likely to bring about a bunch sprint. 

There was one significant non-starter in the form of Tony Martin, who was pulled by Jumbo-Visma as a precaution as he continues his comeback from his Tour de France crash. That left the race leader with just three teammates, and it was perhaps for that reason that Jumbo-Visma didn’t partake in the controlling duties in the peloton. Instead, that was left to Cavendish’s Deceuninck-QuickStep, Grepiel’s Israel Start-Up Nation, and Nizzolo’s Qhubeka-NextHash. 

The target they were chasing was a five-man breakaway, sparked by Dan Bigham (Ribble-Weldtite) and featuring mountains and sprints classification leader Jacob Scott (Canyon-DhB), who continued his 100 per cent presence in the breakaways so far. The other three companions were Chris Blevins (Trinity Racing), Nickolas Zukowsky (Rally Cycling), and Leon Mazzone (Saint Piran). 

The quintet built a lead of three minutes before Scott claimed the early intermediate sprint in Congleton before pipping Zukowsky to the top of the category-3 Blacky Blank climb. The road then tilted uphill towards the day’s second peak of the cat-2 Bottom-of-the-Oven, which played host to a similar two-way battle for the mountains points, with the same outcome. After a descent, it was soon time for the day’s third climb, the cat-3 Bakestonedale Road. This time, Zukowsky didn’t challenge Scott, who gladly helped himself to maximum points for the day. 

That final climb topped out just past the half-way mark, and the peloton headed over the top 2:30 in arrears. 

After another descent, the road then flattened out and the race entered a pattern, despite the rain coming down to complicate matters. Tim Declercq, Nicolas Dlamini, and Mason Holyman shouldered all the work for QuickStep, Qhubeka, and Israel respectively, while up front Scott helped himself to the final two intermediate sprints to make it a full house of breakaway points. 

Things intensified in the final 20km when Sean Bennett replaced Dlamini on the front and injected some new pace. The breakaway soon started to fragment, with Scott the first rider to be dropped when Bigham raised the pace with 17km to go. A few kilometres later, Bigham launched an all-out attack, sailing clear initially. However, the other three worked together to claw their way back, although it was too much for Mazzone, who had to relent. 

Bigham, Zukowsky, and Blevins then combined well to hold off the advancing peloton. They were still out front with 10 seconds with 4km to go, whereupon Ineos took over the reins from QuickStep for the run-in. The catch was finally made just inside the 2km-to-go banner, and things were already getting frantic and messy. The wet weather made that late left-handed treacherous and there were hearts in mouths when Doull went down. Remarkably, given the Welshman was second wheel, Hayter came through unscathed and had Kwiatkowski to lead him out. 

He had a small hand in that Van Aert was caught behind, and Cavendish and Nizzolo both had to claw their way back just to get in a position to sprint, but that took little away from a significant scalp and the latest milestone in what is fast becoming a breakthrough season for Hayter.