Tony Martin wins stage 2 of Vuelta Ciclista al Pais Vasco

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Tony Martin claimed a well-deserved win on stage 2 of the Vuelta al Pais Vasco from Ordizia to Dantxarinea with a solo breakway. The German infiltrated the day's early break before launching two attacks to distance his rivals in the closing 20 kilometres.

Despite the best efforts from the chasing bunch, they were unable to draw Martin back in with the QuickStep rider holding on for victory. Alberto Contador (Tinkoff-Saxo) fended off late attacks from Alejandro Valverde (Movistar) to retain his overall lead.

Ben Swift took second place on the stage to lead the peloton home with Michal Kwiatkowski (Omega Pharma-QuickStep) taking third for the second day in a row.

The win marked Martin's first individual victory of the season.

Victory looked a long way off when Martin joined the early break of seven inside the opening 20 kilometres of racing. Along with his teammate Jan Bakelants, he sailed cleared with Bob Jungels (Trek Factory Racing), Maxime Monfort (Lotto-Belisol), Gorka Izagirre (Movistar Team), and David Malacarne (Europcar) and quickly built up a healthy lead.

The Basque country doesn't do flat roads, or at least they certainly don't race over them, and although the majority of the climbing came within the opening 50 kilometres of the stage, the seven-man group continued to build on its advantage.

Tinkoff was willing to have any easy day and with Izagirre the biggest threat, and over six minutes down on Contador, they allowed the seven to soak up intermediate sprints and mountain points.

Tom Danielson (Garmin-Sharp), Carlos Betancur (AG2r) and Lieuwe Westra (Astana) all abandoned during the stage, but there were no such problems for the break and although Team Sky and Orica GreenEdge mustered a chase the leaders still held a 2:36 buffer with 40 kilometres remaining.

The rolling terrain looked to be taking its toll when the time check flashed up with just over 60 seconds as Martin's group dipped under the 20km to go banner.

But Martin looked fresh and when he revved the engine and lifted the pace, only a Izagirre and Bakelants could respond.

The rest of the break soon fell away leaving Izagirre in an Omega Pharma and Quick Step sandwich. Even Bakelants was holding on for dear life as Martin moved into full time trial mode, his mouth gaping, his arms tucked over the hoods and back as flat as possible.

After a short descent, Bakelants provided Martin with the perfect leaving gift, a brief acceleration that Izagirre was forced to close before the three-time world champion could break clear.

He still had 11 kilometres, and one sharp but short climb to come, but instead of dropping the gap was increasing, peaking 1:10 before the peloton finally began to eat into the lead on the final uncategorised climb.

Valverde provided two token attacks in an attempt to catch his rivals off guard and even Philippe Gilbert demonstrated his improving form with a move inside the final kilometres, but it wasn't enough to stop Martin. The German had plenty of time to savour the win as he crossed the line with the bunch closing to within a few seconds at the end.

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