Peter Kennaugh Wns Great Ocean Road Race

Last updated : 31 January 2016 By CNS Sport

Team Sky's Peter Kennaugh has won the Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Race.

There was a good turn out for the second Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Race in Geelong, Australia.

A 173km race saw the peloton cover twenty kilometres in the first half hour of racing before Pat Lane took the first of two sprints.

Lane was joined by Alexandro De Marchi, Josh Berry and  Adrian Hegyvary and the quartet took a lead of 2.18.

With 135.7kms left, the gap had gone out to 4.30 and then 6.19 when Pat Lane took the second sprint as Kristian House and Morgan Smith tried to bridge the gap to the leaders.

They were successful in joining the leaders but the gap was down to 5.10 with a hundred kilometres left when Caleb Ewan crashed along with Brodie Talbot.

Twenty kilomoetres later and only Smith, House, De Marchi, Lane and Hegyvary were out in front and it was down to Smith, House, De Marchi and Lane going into the final 67 kilometres.

Pat Lane took the Challambra Cres KOM ahead of De Marchi but it was a climb that split the leaders and Lane and De Marchi were clear with 48kms left and Rohan Dennis of BMC taking over on the front of the peloton after some good work from Lotto Soudal's Thomas De Gendt.

A ten rider escape group formed and they got to 1.30 of the the two up front with forty kilometres left.

That signalled the end of the break and with 33kms to go: De Marchi was joined by the Swiss National Champion Danilo Wyss, who brought up this chase group which included the British Champion Peter Kennaugh of Team Sky.

A former British champion Mark Cavendish of Dimension Data decided to abandon as Cameron Mayer, Rafa Valls and Salvatore Puccio led followed by four chasers.

With fifteen kilometres remaining, the peloton had joined the chase group with only Valls up the road. ahead,  2.7 kilometres later and Peter Kennaugh made his move.and flew past Valls to take the lead of the race.

The Manxman opened up a lead of twenty seconds which was reduced to twelve but went back up to around fifteen seconds where it remained.

On Geelong's Waterfront and Kennaugh kept going and he carried on to take a superb victory in 4.04.59 ahead of Leigh Howard of Orica GreenEdge, Trek's Niccolò Bonifazio, Pim Ligthart of Lotto Soudal and Simon Gerrans of Orica GreenEdge.

Ben Swift of Team Sky was eighth with Luke Rowe 13th, Steven Lampier of JLT Condor in 14th, Josh Hunt of One Pro Cycling in 62nd, Richard Handley of One Pro Cycling in 70th, Alistair Slater of JLT Condor in 85th and Christopher Lawless of JLT Condor 87th of 92 finishers.