Mark Renshaw (HTC-Highroad) sent a message to the Australian national selectors by taking victory in the fifth stage of the Tour of Britain between Exeter and Exmouth. The Australian, who was passed over for selection for the World championships later in the month, finished ahead of teammate Mark Cavendish in a reverse of their usual positions in a bunch sprint at the end of the 180.3km Devon stage.
UnitedHealthcare’s Robert Förster was the best of the rest, taking third behind the HTC-Highroad pair.
"On the final kilometre, Renshaw was piloting Cavendish perfectly for the win," HTC-Highroad sports director Allan Peiper explained, "But in the last corner, Cav backed off and Renshaw came out of it in the lead, so he hammered toward the line and finished just ahead of Cavendish."
For a long time a sprint looked unlikely after a thirteen-man break managed to get more than six minutes clear in the stage’s mid point. The best-placed rider in the break was Linus Gerdemann (Leopard Trek), who was one of four in the group that started the day just 19 seconds behind race leader Lars Boom (Rabobank). Boom’s teammate Bram Tankink was one of those four though, and so the Dutch team decided not to chase.
Eventually though, the peloton did manage to pull back the thirteen men, with Damien Gaudin (Europcar) the last to resist. The Frenchman was finally reeled in with just thee and a half kilometres remaining, only for HTC-Highroad to take control of the sprint finish.
"Rabobank did a lot of work to reel them in but cracked toward the end, and with the help of a few more teams we were able to bring the break back a bit," Peiper explained. "Somewhere between thirty and forty kilometres to go the break started attacking and fell apart, and by twenty to go, the peloton was back together with our boys up front."
"The guys did a great job controlling the front until Bernie [Eisel] got a flat. The roads were extremely narrow and without radios it took too long for us to get a car to him, so he was effectively out of the race."
Boom holds on to the race lead, with Geraint Thomas (Team Sky) still lurking in second spot, just twelve seconds behind.
A local rider pulls a big group clear and nobody decides to chase
The first big attack of the day came from local rider Jonathan Tiernan-Locke (Rapha-Condor-Sharp), starting the day in second place in the mountains classification, who jumped away on the first climb to Haytor Rocks on Dartmoor. The British rider stayed away over the top of the next two climbs to the Coffin Stone and Huccaby Tor, but soon afterwards was joined by Linus Gerdemann (Leopard Trek), Thomas De Gendt (Vacansoleil-DCM) and Bartosz Huzarski (NetApp).
A chase group of nine riders made up of Alex Wetterhall (Endura), Preben Van Hecke (Topsport Vlaanderen-Mercator), Bram Tankink (Rabobank), Bert-Jan Lindeman (Vacansoleil-DCM), Gabriel Rasch (Garmin-Cervélo), Michael Rogers (Team Sky), Marcin Bialoblocki (Motorpoint), Damien Gaudin (Europcar) and Rory Sutherland (UnitedHealthcare) managed to get across to the leading four.
As they passed through the feedzone after 96km the group was 6’30” ahead of the peloton and, with most of the bit teams in the race represented it was unclear which team would take the responsibility to pull them back.
With nobody in the break HTC-Highroad would ordinarily be the team to take control of the peloton, but this was complicated somewhat by the withdrawal of Alex Rasmussen on the morning of the stage. The Dane would normally have been one of the strong workers in this kind of situation, but the American team was now reduced to five riders.
The gap comes down as the group splits up
Despite there being no one team to take control on the front of the peloton, the gap began to fall steadily in the second half of the stage. With 40km to go, and with the gap down to less that two minutes, the attacks began in the front group, with Van Hecke the first to try to escape the others.
The Belgain’s attack was chased down by Rogers, with Tankink bringing the others across but, when Wetterhall went a few kilometres later, he was able to get clear. The Swedish rider was soon joined by De Gendt and Van Hecke, with Gaudin chasing across, cutting the thirteen-man lead group to four. They now led by less than a minute though and, even without Rasmussen, HTC-Highroad put Lars Bak, Matt Brammeier and Bernhard Eisel to work, and the gap was shrinking fast.
One by one the remnants of the breakaway began to give up; first De Gendt sat up, then Wetterhall was unable to hold on, and finally, as Gaudin attacked, Van Hecke was forced to concede and the Frenchman rode away alone.
The Europcar rider was determined to stay away, but was now fighting against the combined efforts of HTC-Highroad and Garmin-Cervélo, who had come forward on behalf of the previous day’s winner World champion Thor Hushovd. With just over three kilometres to go the Frenchman finally gave up his effort and Hushovd’s team took the peloton into the finish.
With just over two kilometres to go the An Post-Sean Kelly team pulled through, but Garmin-Cervélo and HTC-Highroad soon reasserted themselves. Under the flamme rouge An Post-Sean Kelly came forward once more, but was battling for the lead with UnitedHealthcare as they approached the final corner.
Renshaw led Cavendish around as he has successfully done so many times but, doubtless mindful of the Australian selectors’ decision, the Manxman eased up and allowed his teammate to open up a gap. Renshaw continued his sprint, with Cavendish leading the rest behind him, and crossed the line first, just ahead of his teammate with both riders sitting up and celebrating in the reverse of their accustomed order.