Stage Two York - Sheffield 201km
The big news prior to the stage was that Mark Cavendish became the first rider to abandon the Tour after his crash with Simon Gerrans on Stage One. Except from that there were no other abandonments and 197 riders left York. The days' break was seven riders large and they were: Armindo Fonseca (Bretagne), Bart de Clercq (Lotto-Belisol), Cyril Lemoine (Cofidis), Blel Kadri (AG2R), Matthew Busche (Trek), David de la Cruz (NetApp-Endura) and Perriq Quemeneur (Europcar). The seven riders quickly made a lead of three minutes back to the peloton. On the first climb of the day Lemoine pipped Fonseca to take the only point up the Cote de Blubberhouses, the peloton were having trouble coping with the narrow roads and there was a crash at the back of the peloton that involved Simon Gerrans and Joaquim Rodriguez. Sky and Giant-Shimano chased down the breaks' lead to under two minutes at the days' sprint. At the sprint, Bryan Coquard (Europcar) took maximum points (8) from the peloton. On the Cote d'Oxenhope Moor, Quemeneur beat Lemoine as they took the only two points available on the 3rd Category climb. Lemoine took the lead in the KOM competition, as he beat de la Cruz on the Cat 3. Ripponden Hill and the same result took place on the Cat 3. Greetland Hill. The race sprung into life on Holme Moss as Kadri attacked, so did Thomas Voeckler with Nicolas Edet and Tony Martin whilst at the back of the race Marcel Kittel was dropped by the peloton and after a bike change rolled into Sheffield, 19m 50secs behind the winner. Kadri topped the 2nd Category Holme Moss and took 5 points, Edet, 4, Voeckler with 2 and Martin with one. Kadri's 1:15 lead lasted until he was caught on Midhopestone Hill; where TJ Slanger and Andrew Talansky took the points on the 3rd Category Cote. On the descent a proper peloton of 60 formed with all the favourites in it. Grivko of Astana was the first up the 4th Category climb the Cote de Bradfield. On the descent, Peter Sagan's Cannondale team took control of the peloton and dropped riders such as Kristoff, Yates and Arashiro were dropped on the Category 3 Cote d'Outbridge. However, at the front of the bunch Pierre Rolland and Jean-Christophe Peraud attacked and took the points at the summit. The latter was caught with 13km to go and Rolland was caught on the final climb the Cat. 4 Jenkin Road. On the climb, all the GC contenders and Sagan were at the front trying to stop attacks. Froome attacked and took the only point at the summit but was swiftly caught by the Saxo-Tinkoff led peloton. There was an attack by Vincenzo Nibali with 2km to go, with a hesitation in the peloton by Sky, Sagan and Saxo-Tinkoff, was not caught and the Italian champion took the win by two seconds and the Yellow jersey by the same margin.
For more detailed results click here
For more detailed results click here
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