Tour of Britain: Steve Cummings expects close fight for victory
By Matt Westby
Last Updated: 09/09/16 8:05pm
Steve Cummings believes he will have to fight for every second of his Tour of Britain lead in the race's final three stages this weekend.
The 35-year-old Briton holds advantages of 49 seconds over second-placed Tom Dumoulin and 51 seconds over third-placed Rohan Dennis with just stage 7a's 15km time trial and stage 7b and stage eight's flat circuit races left to come.
Both Dumoulin and Dennis are time-trial experts and Cummings expects to lose time to both of them on Saturday morning.
He said: "I've been second twice before in this race, once by four seconds and once by eight seconds, I think, so this race is normally won by seconds, not minutes.
"You still have to claw back those seconds and it's not done until it's done.
"For the time trial, I'll just give it full gas and hopefully it'll be enough to hold off the superstar time-triallists Dumoulin and Dennis."
Cummings has only won one stage race in his 12-year career so far and believes his team will be to thank if he can secure a second this weekend.
He added: "The team have done an excellent job all week in taking care of me every day and sacrificed chances for Mark [Cavendish] in the sprints to protect me.
"I was feeling a little bit of pressure coming into today [stage six] and I just thought all I could do was do my best and I gave it my all at the end and I'm delighted to take yellow."
Find out more about the course for stages 7a and 7b in our race guide and follow them with our live blog from 11am.
