Christopher Sutton begins perfect day for Sky after taking second stage of Vuelta A Espana 2011
Sky Procycling team’s Christopher Sutton showed a good effort in the second stage of grand Tour of Vuelta a Espana 2011 on Sunday, August 21. Daniele Bennati took his overall leader’s yellow jersey.
The race started in La Nucia and ended in Playas de Orihuela. The 26-year-old Australian cyclists took the total of 4 hours, 11 minutes and 41 seconds to cover the distance of 171.5 kilometres.
In the final kilometres, Reynes and Sutton managed to open a huge gap but Sutton jumped out and Vicente Reynes Mimo failed to respond and grabbed the second spot with the same timing of Sprinter.
After winning the stage, Sutton told the media, "We don't exactly have the perfect lead-out train here but what we do have in the team is strength. The one person I and the whole team really want to dedicate this win to Txema. He's gone but he's not forgotten.”
The first climb presented the option for the cyclists to gain a blue and white polka dot king of mountain jersey, although the break was quickly heading up the road.
A group of four cyclists made their first breakaway lead including, Adam Hansen (Omega Pharma-Lotto), Jesus Rosendo (Andalucia), Paul Martens (Rabobank) and Steve Houanard (Ag2r). All of them managed to gain a lead of more than six minutes as Paul Martens
crested the Alto de Relleu first.
With 20 kilometres to go, the pace in the bunch began to pick up and the HTC-Highroad team’s Reynes managed to control his pace in the front of the peloton but a twisted run made it difficult for the cyclists. However, Sutton increased his pace to make get
in the right place and took his lead ahead of the other cyclists.
He further added, “I thought ‘oh this is a long way to go’ and I looked back and no one was there. So to win today and to deliver it for all of Team Sky is a dream come true – I can’t believe it.”
Bennati grabbed sixth place in the stage but he showed a tremendous effort to take the overall standing with the timing of 4 hours, 28 minutes and 11 seconds. Jakob Fuglsang was runner-up and Maxime Monfort was in third spot behind Italian.
The next stage will start in Petrer and end in Totana. All the cyclists covered the distance of 164 kilometres.
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