Edvald Boasson Hagen (Team Columbia-HTC) won his second consecutive stage in the Tour of Britain in a bunch sprint on the Blackpool promenade, ahead of Chris Sutton (Garmin-Slipstream) and Martin Reimer (Cervelo TestTeam). With the ten second time bonus, the Norwegian is now just one second behind race leader Kai Reus (Rabobank).

“We decided to ride for Edvald again and lead him out in the sprint. It worked perfectly,” directeur sportif Valerio Piva said. “Maxime got across to the break in the middle, hilly section of the stage. That was important because it meant the other guys didn’t have to chase and could safe their energy for the sprint. There was a crash in the finale but because we lead out the sprint, we avoided it.”

“We’re close now and so we have to try and win overall, he added, “Edvald is on form, we’ve got a strong team here, and so why not? We’ve done it before.”

A breakaway of six riders – including Boasson Hagen’s teammate Maxime Monfort – was only caught in the final kilometres, where the Columbia-HTC team took control of the peloton. Sutton was the first to launch his sprint but the Norwegian came past to take the victory.

Sutton also moved closer to the overall lead with a fourth consecutive top three, and is now just five seconds adrift of the yellow jersey in third overall; he now leads the points standings.

“It was a pretty good day for me overall and I have to be pleased with how things have gone so far this week,” he said. “It’s been a great week for me so far and I had no intention of chasing the GC when I got here. But now all the lads are telling me to go for it and give it a go but we will have to see.”