Lampre's Grega Bole launched a late solo attack to claim the victory at the GP Ouest-France in Brittany on Sunday.
Gerrans takes second place for Team Sky
Lampre's Grega Bole launched a late solo attack to claim the victory at the GP Ouest-France in Brittany on Sunday.
He held off Simon Gerrans (Team Sky) and Thomas Voeckler (Europcar) at the end of the marathon 248.3 kilometres WorldTour event.
Gerrans, who won the race - also known as GP Plouay - in 2009, had launched his own attack with five kilometres remaining on the 13th and final of the 19.1km circuits.
He surged clear on the final climb up Ty-Marrec and briefly put daylight between himself and the rest before Philippe Gilbert (Omega Pharma-Lotto) and a handful of other riders were able to bridge the gap.
The move had seen Gerrans power past Michal Kwiatkowski (RadioShack) who himself had slipped the peloton at the start the last circuit and held a lead of 30 seconds going into the final 10km.
But what proved the race-winning move came soon after as Bole jumped past everyone on the downhill run towards the
flamme rouge.
And he opened up just enough of an advantage to hold the rest at bay, Bole crossing the line at least a couple of bike lengths in front, with Gerrans finding extra reserves to kick again for second place, just ahead of Voeckler, with world champion Thor Hushovd (Garmin-Cervelo) in fourth.
The hugely testing race, which featured no less than 3,900 climbing metres, had earlier featured an eight-man break which held a lead of just under four minutes with three circuits remaining.
However that gap came down steadily as the likes of Team Sky and Movistar worked hard on the front of the peloton and it was largely back together before Gerrans went in pursuit of Kwiatkowski with 5km to go.
