By finishing third in the queen stage, Peter Kennaugh defended his overall lead in the Tour of Austria. With the hardest stage now out of the way, the Brit is hopeful that things are looking good for the rest of the race.

Peter Kennaugh put in a heroic display on one of the hardest climbs in Europe to extend his overall lead at the Tour of Austria.

Kennaugh headed into the Queen stage with a 15 second advantage and the 25-year-old was kept safe throughout the day thanks to some strong work by his Team Sky team-mates.

The stage was always likely to come down to the ascent of the infamous Kitzbüheler Horn and it proved to be the case as Dayer Quintana (Movistar) dropped his fellow breakaway riders on the climb to solo to his first professional win.

Kennaugh was left to fend for himself inside the closing kilometres as the slopes tipped a maximum of 23 per cent, but the Manxman battled on bravely and despite coming home in third, 54 seconds behind Quintana, the Team Sky rider extended his race lead over Damiano Caruso (Cannondale) to a provisional 29 seconds.

After the stage Kennaugh praised the work of his team-mates on a tough day out.

"It was a tough start with a lot of people wanting to be in the break," he explained to TeamSky.com

"Christian Knees particularly at the start did an awesome job and once the break was established and things settled down a bit the boys were incredible. They rode and controlled a 10-man break between three of them – Nathan (Earle), CJ (Sutton) and Sebastian (Henao) – at three minutes all day. It was so good to watch and for those guys to have so much faith in me was a really nice feeling.

"It started raining 30km or so from the bottom of the climb which made it pretty stressful. Christian did another great job getting me to the bottom at the front. Then Josh (Edmondson) came up and was awesome, riding the first 3km setting a really good tempo. It was such a steep and hard climb so it was just a case of not putting myself into the red. I knew it would have been tough to recover so I just tried to be patient and did enough to stay in the jersey.

"Hopefully it’s looking good for the rest of the race."

Sports Director Dan Frost was happy to see Kennaugh retain the jersey but admitted conditions had made life difficult for the team.

He said: "It’s been pouring down and the riders had to deal with it for the final hour and a half of racing.

"It made life difficult in the town before the final climb and meant we couldn’t stay together as a team. Josh (Edmondson) was the only rider left to support Pete and he did a tremendous job. The team had worked up to that point pulling on the front. Pete finished it off himself really well and kept the jersey.

"He is really in great form. We just need to continue to support him and put more riders around him on the climbs. There are some strong riders in the race. We saw how well Quintana is riding today. Caruso is also a danger man but there is still a long way to go in the race.”