Mark Cavendish wins final 8b stage as Lars Boom wraps up win in Tour of Britain 2011
HTC-Highroad Team’s Mark Cavendish delighted the home fans to take victory in the final 8b stage of Tour of Britain 2011 in London on Sunday, September 18. Lars Boom maintained his overall standing and wears the final gold jersey.
In the final stage all the cyclists covered the 10-lap circuit. The 26-year-old Manx cyclists took a total of 1 hour, 59 minutes and 13 seconds to cover the distance of 80 kilometres. His team-mate Mark Renshaw was in second place and Robert Forster of UnitedHealthcare
Pro cycling secured third with the same timing of the Sprinter.
HTC-Highroad’s sporting director Allan Peiper said, "Rabobank was doing a lot of the work at the front and Team Sky was also controlling. But by the last kilometre, Renshaw and Eisel were on top of it, and dropped Cav off in the usual fashion for the last
time."
In the second lap of the stage the four cyclists were able to gain a gap including, Ronan McLaughlin (An Post-Sean Kelly), Kristian House (Rapha Condor-Sharp), Gediminas Bagdonas (An Post-Sean Kelly) and Bartosz Huzarski (Team NetApp). All of them were running
effectively and McLaughlin jumped clear and gained maximum points to take the first intermediate sprint.
McLaughlin showed his tremendous skills and took the other two sprints of the stage ahead of House and Bagdonas, although he also took the title of Most Aggressive Rider.
Rabobank rider Boom took the overall lead with a timing of 26 hours, 57 minutes and 35 seconds while Stephen Cummings of Sky was runner-up at 36 seconds behind Boom.
Boom said, "It was awesome. London is a very nice city. It’s a lovely country, I didn’t expect that. The public was awesome, a lot of cheering so it was a great week for us. My most memorable moment was the first stage, the circuit, the small roads, the
rain - it was awesome.”
NetApp Team’s Jan Barta grabbed third spot with a difference of 55 seconds ahead of Linus Gerdemann and Jonathan Tiernan-Locke.
Geraint Thomas took the overall points standing with 70 points ahead of Cavendish with 67 points. Pieter Ghyllebert secured the overall sprint classification with 36 points ahead of Bagdonas while Jonathan Tiernan-Locke took the title of King of Mountain
with 71 points.
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