2012 Tour of Britain

rdf:langString 2012 Tour of Britain

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rdf:langString Great Britain

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rdf:langString Netherlands

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rdf:langString Australia

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rdf:langString Great Britain

rdf:langString The 2012 Tour of Britain was the ninth running of the current Tour of Britain and the 73rd British tour in total. The race consisted of eight stages, starting on 9 September in Ipswich, and finishing on 16 September in Guildford. The race was part of the 2012 UCI Europe Tour, and was categorised by the UCI as a 2.1 category race. The race was originally won by Endura Racing rider Jonathan Tiernan-Locke, who became the first British rider to win the race in its current guise and the first to win a British tour since Chris Lillywhite won the 1993 Milk Race. Tiernan-Locke assumed the race lead with a second-place finish on the sixth stage and maintained the lead until the end of the race. He won by eighteen seconds ahead of Australia's Nathan Haas, who rode for the Garmin–Sharp squad, and the podium was rounded out by Liquigas–Cannondale's Damiano Caruso, who finished five seconds behind Haas and twenty-three seconds in arrears of Tiernan-Locke. In 2014 however, following investigation for biological passport irregularities, Tiernan-Locke was banned for two years and stripped of his 2012 victory. In the race's other classifications, UnitedHealthcare rider Boy Van Poppel won the points classification for the most consistent finisher in each of the stages; despite not winning any stages, Van Poppel placed four times inside the top three placings of a stage. The mountains classification was won by a Rapha Condor–Sharp rider for the second year in succession, as Kristian House succeeded Tiernan-Locke as the winner; the sprints classification was won by Peter Williams of the Node 4–Giordana Racing team, while Saur–Sojasun won the teams classification.