Friday 12 September 2014 18:05, UK
England’s Alex Dowsett moved into the overall lead of the Tour of Britain after finishing second behind fellow breakaway rider Matthias Brandle in a surprise outcome on stage six.
Dowsett started the day 19th in the general classification, 1min 25 seconds down, but was allowed to join the escape group and subsequently finished 1min 50sec ahead of race leader Michal Kwiatkowski following a catastrophic misjudgement by the teams leading the peloton.
Dowsett, Brandle and the third member of the breakaway, Tom Stewart, were bizarrely afforded an advantage of over nine minutes and it wasn’t until it was too late that the likes of Kwiatkowski’s Omega Pharma – Quick-Step squad finally began to frantically chase.
Dowsett also collected 12 bonus seconds on the day – for winning two intermediate sprints and finishing runner-up on the stage - meaning he now opens up a 34-second lead over second-placed Kwiatkowski overall, with Italy’s Edoardo Zardini 40 seconds back in third and Sir Bradley Wiggins dropping to 1min 2sec adrift in seventh.
Brandle, meanwhile, claimed a breakaway victory for the second day in succession after reaching an agreement with Dowsett to sprint ahead to the finish line in Hemel Hempstead.
Dowsett said afterwards: “That was the hardest day of my life. I got in the break and knew it would be a headwind all day, so I thought they would let us out, bring us back and that would be that.
“When the gap went up to seven minutes, I thought, ‘That’s quite big’. And then it went eight minutes, nine minutes, and 9min 15sec was the biggest – that’s when I really started digging in.
“I made an agreement with Matthias that he would win the stage because there was a good chance I would take the yellow – that was a risk I was willing to take. He gave me everything and I couldn’t have done it without him. Tom from Madison gave everything he could and I’m grateful to him.”
The 205.6km stage started in Bath and although it rolled for much of the day, it had the makings of a sprint finish.
However, when Dowsett (Movistar), Brandle (IAM Cycling) and Stewart (Madison Genesis) still led by over six minutes heading into the last 50km, that script was all but torn up and attention in the peloton turned instead to keeping Dowsett’s lead to a minimum.
Such was the panic in the bunch that even sprinters like Mark Cavendish (Omega Pharma – Quick-Step) and Ben Swift (Team Sky) were forced put in lengthy turns on the front, but both those teams tired themselves out and with only Zardini’s Bardiani-CSF willing to offer assistance, there was not enough cumulative strength to deny Brandle the stage win and Dowsett the race lead.
Brandle said: “It was really an epic day. I am normally a breakaway rider – I did it so many times and so many times the peloton catch me. It worked really, really well. We had a really hard first hour. We went full gas to the line and we knew it was possible today. Now I have two stage wins I can go easy."
Stage six result
1 Matthias Brandle (Aut) IAM Cycling, 4:44:49
2 Alex Dowsett (Gbr) Movistar, +1sec
3 Tom Stewart (Gbr) Madison Genesis, same time
4 Sonny Colbrelli (Ita) Bardiani, +1:51
5 Nicola Ruffoni (Ita) Bardiani, st
6 Ben Swift (GB) Team Sky, st
7 Martin Kohler (Swi) BMC Racing, st
8 Heinrich Haussler (Aus) IAM Cycling, st
9 Rick Zabel (Ger) BMC Racing, st
10 Tom Veelers (Ned) Giant-Shimano, st
Selected others
19 Michal Kwiatkowski (Pol) Omega Pharma – Quick-Step, st
47 Bradley Wiggins (GB) Team Sky, st
General classification
1 Alex Dowsett (Gbr) Movistar, 25:07:53
2 Michal Kwiatkowski (Pol) Omega Pharma - Qucik-Step, +34sec
3 Edoardo Zardini (Ita) Bardiani, +40
4 Nicolas Roche (Ire) Tinoff-Saxo, +50
5 Dylan Teuns (Bel) BMC, +51
6 Ion Izagirre (Spa) Movistar, +1:00
7 Bradley Wiggins (GB) Team Sky, +1:02
8 David Lopez (Spa) eam Sky, +1:04
9 Leopold Konig (Cze) NetApp-Endura, +1:06
10 Sebastien Reichenbach (Swi) IAM Cycling, same time
