Peter Hawkins has taken a podium finish in the first major race on the UK calendar and goes into tomorrow's stage 2 of the Tour of the Reservoir just behind team mate and overall leader Alex Peters. Hawkins is seen above at the recent training camp in Spain.
By Brian Canty
Ireland's Peter Hawkins has notched a great result on the opening stage of the Tour of the Reservoir in the UK today, taking second place behind his Madison Genesis team mate Alex Peters after 104 kilometres of racing.
They had been in the day's main break that featured Yanto Barker, Matthieu Boulo (both Team Raleigh), Steve Lampier, Marcin Bialoblocki (both Veloclosure Giordana), Mike Northey (Madison Genesis), Tom Moses and Graham Briggs (both Rapha Condor JLT).
Peters took a solo win, with Hawkins taking the sprint from the remains of breakaway just behind.
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That break of nine formed early in the five-lap race and quickly established a substantial lead over the rest, helped by the heavy rain and strong tailwind.
With 15 miles left and five minutes between the leaders and the first chasing group, thoughts turned to the finish. After periods of jostling and looking over shoulders, the attacks started to come as the dominant teams tried to shake off some of their rivals.
Tom Moses hit the front and opened up a gap of around 10 seconds with his team-mate Briggs doing his best to stop any chasers. But Moses was eventually pulled back as Madison-Genesis upped the pace heading round the final lap.
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Northey had fallen back as the pace of the attacks proved too much, and he was joined shortly after by Lampier.
The remaining seven forged ahead, but it was Peters who made the decisive move, attacking on a climb and heading on to victory, with team-mate Peter Hawkins second, going one better than his third place on day one last year.
"It's great to start the season so well," he said after.
"Until now I've only done two races in Ireland but getting a result like this today shows that the work I've been doing at home and on training camps has been working for me.
"The race split right at the start today and there were nine of us up the road for the whole day - with three of our team there. It whittled down on the last lap leaving six guys in contention.
“So my team mate Alex (Peters) went with three kilometres to go and held a good lead. That allowed me to follow wheels and wait for the sprint. I won that from the group and Alex was just ahead of me. It's great to see him going so well at the first big race in the UK.
"Going into tomorrow's we're in a strong position with the first two on GC and six other strong guys to help defend. But tomorrow is tough and it should suit us. I'm sure we'll have a hard day but hopefully we can hang onto the jersey."
Tomorrow's stage is a 165-kilometre, eight lap course.
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