Italy's Matteo Trentin claimed his first victory of the year in a day marked by echelons at the Tour Poitou-Charentes. Etixx-Quick Step outnumbered the other teams in the 33-man leading group to give Trentin a royal lead out by no less than Tony Martin, Julian Alaphilippe and Mark Renshaw.
Arnaud Gérard of Bretagne-Séché Environnement retained the first place in the overall classification ahead of a morning stage to be followed by a 23-km individual time trial for which Martin appears like the hot favourite.
"It's surely a very nice win for me," Trentin told Cyclingnews at the finish. "I've not been very lucky this year. I wanted to win to turn things to my favour after what happened to me early this year. Thanks to my team I managed to come up with this win today. I was supposed to sprint today but it's never easy. We've been helped by the wind, that's how we were six of us in the 33-man group. It was a good situation. It's always difficult to win a sprint. There was [Bryan] Coquard at the front, [Yauheni] Hutarovitch who came second, many other fast riders. There was competition!"
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Moreno Hofland (LottoNL-Jumbo) who was part of the front group and a potential threat for the Etixx-Quick Step train had a flat tyre with 12km to go. Since the 33-man escape was formed with 30km to go, it was a duel between the Belgian team at the head and Movistar in the peloton. Rather than saving energy for the crucial time trial on day 3, Martin put the hammer down for the second day in a row.
"It was a hard stage but we showed once again that we were the strongest team in the wind," said Martin who identified the other time triallists in the move. Rasmus Quaade (Cult Energy) and Johan Le Bon (FDJ) remain in the same time as the triple world champion but in two days, the man who crashed at the Tour de France in the yellow jersey managed to create a difference of 35 seconds with the Movistar trio made of Alex Dowsett, Adriano Malori and Jonathan Castroviejo.
"Etixx-Quick Step really wanted to leave Movistar behind," noted race leader Arnaud Gérard. "They were riding strongly. Otherwise, with no wind, it would have been a quiet day. I never panicked though. It's a pity that Hutarovitch finished second. We would have liked to have two wins in two days. Anyway, nobody will be able to say that this Tour Poitou-Charentes is a race of stereotypes. It's more interesting than most of the World Tour events!"
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