Nicolas Roche went into the final hilly stage of the Tour of Britain hoping to gain time on Bradley Wiggins. The Irishman briefly managed to distance the defending champion but things came back together in the finale.

Tinkoff-Saxo’s Nicolas Roche was 50 seconds behind in fourth position entering today’s 226 kilometer long 7th stage of Tour of Britain. A hilly finale contained several launch pads for attacks and Tinkoff-Saxo played a dominant role in the final part of the stage where Roche gained time and but retained fourth overall.

5 riders created a significant gap to the peloton on today’s stage and it took a lot of hard chasing from Tinkoff-Saxo and numerous other teams to reduce their advantage.  The big difference was made on a steep climb with 15 kilometers to go where Tinkoff-Saxo put the hurt on the field and dropped the leading rider, Alex Dowsett (Movistar).

Nicolas Roche was chasing both the stage win and an improvement of his spot in the GC and he was well-supported by Rory Sutherland and Chris Juul entering the final climb with 6 kilometers remaining. Here, the chase group split up once again with Roche in a very select group but a second chase group with Sutherland and Juul bridged the gap a few kilometers later.

Roche and his companions weren’t able to catch Julian Vermote (Omega-Pharma Quick Step) who won the stage and in between Vermote and Roche was Dylan van Baarle from the early breakaway and Baarle took over the leader’s jersey from Dowsett.

Roche is now 35 seconds away from the top spot of the podium.

DS Lars Michaelsen says:

“The boys did a good job throughout the day and in the finale, Nicolas actually managed to create a gap to Wiggins but he was supported by his teammate and they made it back to Roche on the final kilometers. Nico is still 4th overall but unfortunately Wiggins is only 12 seconds behind him before the 8,8 km long time trial tomorrow.

"It’s going to be to hard moving up in the GC on this short distance and with strong going riders like Kwiatowski, Van Baarle and Teuns around him in the top 5. However, we will go into the to final stages (8,8 km TT and 88 km circuit race in Central London) with everything we have.”