Team Columbia's Edvald Boasson Hagen made it two stage victories in a row today to take Stage 5 of the Tour of Britain with an impressive sprint to the line. Hagen made his move with over 1Km to go outpacing Matt Goss (CSC Saxobank) and Danilo Di Luca (LPR Brakes) in the long dash for the line. Agritubel's Geoffroy Lequatre remains in yellow, but Steve Cummins (Barloworld) has moved to within six seconds of him in the overall classification. Roger Hammond (Columbia) continues to lead the points race, but he is now tied for the lead with Goss. Ben Swift (Great Britain), continues to lead the King of the Mountains competition and may well have done enough to have secured the polka dot jersey for the second year running. Today's stage saw some aggressive racing from the leading contenders with Goss making a break only 8Km in from the Hull. He was quickly chased down, but then broke again along with fellow Aussie, Travis Meyer (South Australis.com/AIS) and Di Luca 20Km down the road. The Trio put two minutes into the peloton before Hagen and Victor Hugo Pena (Rock Racing) joined them at 53km. Hagen later paid tribute to his teamates for getting him up to the break. At one point the leading break gained over five minutes from the chasing peloton, but by the time Hagen made his decisive jump the peloton was closing them down fast and the pressure of trying to keep away had already proved too much for Meyer. Tomorrow's stage takes the racers on a 156Km route from Darlington to Gateshead and Hagen will be aiming to make it three in a row. Stage 5 results 1 Edvald Boasson Hagen – Team Columbia 3.46.23 2 Matthew Goss – Team CSC Saxo Bank 0.04 3 Danilo Di Luca – LPR Brakes 0.07 4 Victor Hugo Peña – Rock Racing 0.11 5 Julian Dean – Team Garmin-Chipotle 6 Jonathan Bellis – Team CSC Saxo Bank 7 Ben Swift – Great Britain 8 Roger Hammond – Team Columbia 9 Gabriele Bosisio – LPR Brakes 10 Russell Downing – Pinarello RT - Canditv General classification after stage 5 1 Geoffroy Lequatre – Agritubel 17.29.40 2 Steve Cummings – Barloworld 0.06 3 Gabriele Bosisio – LPR Brakes 0.10 4 Ian Stannard – Great Britain 0.11 5 Daniel Fleeman – AnPost 0.13 6 Benny De Schrooder – AnPost 0.14 7 Dan Martin – Team Garmin-Chipotle 8 Frederik Veuchelen – Topsport Vlaanderen 0.23 9 Emilien Berges – Agritubel 0.35 10 Russell Downing – Pinarello RT - Canditv 1.24
Plucked from the obscurity of his London commute back in the mid-Nineties to live in Bath and edit bike mags our man made the jump to the interweb back in 2006 as launch editor of a large cycling website somewhat confusingly named after a piece of navigational equipment. He came up with the idea for road.cc mainly to avoid being told what to do… Oh dear, issues there then. Tony tries to ride his bike every day and if he doesn't he gets grumpy, he likes carbon, but owns steel, and wants titanium. When not on his bike or eating cake Tony spends his time looking for new ways to annoy the road.cc team. He's remarkably good at it.