Remy Cusin (Cofidis) took his first ever professional victory in the second stage of the Tour of Denmark, between Strandvejen and Århus. Beaten into second place for a second successive day though, was Matti Breschel (Rabobank), who took over the race lead. The two riders escaped the peloton on the last of three finishing circuits around Denmark’s second city, holding on to cross the line and foil the sprinters by two seconds.
The stage was dominated by a break from Kurt Asle Arvesen (Team Sky), Michael Reihs (Christina Watches-Onfone) and Lasse Bøchman (Glud & Marstrand-LRØ) which got away after 37km. The threesome was later joined by Christopher Juul Jensen (Glud & Marstrand-LRØ) and Jack Bobridge (Garmin-Cervelo), who successfully bridged across.
40km from the finish Leopard Trek duo Jakob Fuglsang and Martin Mortensen jumped across to the leaders. They were just 45 seconds ahead of the peloton by now though, and were pulled back, thanks to work from the Saxo Bank-SunGard team, with 20km to go, just before they reached the finishing circuit.
There were numerous attacks on the three 4.7km laps, from riders including Sébastien Turgot (Europcar) and Steven Kruijswijk (Rabobank), but it was not until the final three kilometres that Cusin managed to get a decisive gap. The 25-year-old Frenchman was followed by Breschel and, at the top of a rise with two kilometres to go they had a lead of ten seconds.
The peloton managed to close the gap, but not enough to catch the pair and Cusin outsprinted Breschel to take the victory. The Danish rider was disappointed to miss out of victory for the second consecutive stage, but has the consolation of taking the yellow jersey from stage one winner Sacha Modolo (Colnago-CSF) by four seconds.