Matteo Trentin wins stage and leads GC in Tour of Britain: Today was the perfect day for us
Sep 09 2019 05:08 am CET
Matteo Trentin © Mary Cárdenas / CyclingPub.com
Matteo Trentin (Mitchelton-Scott) has taken the victory of the second stage in the OVO Energy Tour of Britain and climbed to the top of the General Classification.
The second day of competition took the riders through a 165.9-kilometre stage in Scotland that featured three climbs of the second category and a final stretch of cobbles. Three men formed the initial breakaway and later on the day they were followed by Frederik Frison (Lotto-Soudal) and Mathieu van der Poel (Corendon-Circus) which forced the peloton to change the pace.
The escapees were reeled back in just before the last climb of the day, where Ineos' Pavel Sivakov launched an attack that caused a break in the peloton, leaving the then leader Dylan Groenewegen struggling behind. The reduced peloton caught the Russian and with 3k to go, Katusha-Alpecin's Alex Dowsett also made a move but was reeled back in the last kilometre.
Trentin was the fastest man in the final stretch and crossed the line before Jasper de Buyst (Lotto Soudal) and Mike Teunissen (Jumbo-Visma). The Italian also topped the overall classification at the end of the stage.
"We planned this morning to let Jumbo work through the day and then try to make it as hard as possible on the final climb, we knew that Groenewegen is likely to be dropped if we do everything right," said Trentin. "It happened, I still had three guys with me and two of them Durbridge and Cameron Meyer started to pull straight away from the top of the climb and Cam was still really good to bring me and Edmonson into the last corner.
"I wasn’t expecting van der Poel to attack to be honest because I saw him as one of the main favourites for today, but I don’t know what he wanted to do, we actually also tried to contest the intermediate sprint just before the climb to get some seconds for the GC because in this race that’s something I can do but I need to have seconds over the time trialists because otherwise, they’re going to smash me in the time trial. That’s all, so far today was the perfect day for us."
Matteo Trentin wins stage and leads GC in Tour of Britain: Today was the perfect day for us https://t.co/F22QtMlXfB#OVOToB
— CyclingPub (@CyclingPub) September 8, 2019
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