Edoardo Zardini took the second big win of his career when he beat the WorldTour stars in the Tour of Britain queen stage. Having initially been dropped by Nicolas Roche, the Italian faked to be dead before he launched a powerful attack.

In April, Edoardo Zardini came of age when he attacked from the bottom of the final climb in a hard mountain stage of the Giro del Trentino and managed to hold off the race favourites to take a surprise stage win. Today he made a very similar performance to conquer the Tour of Britain queen stage.

Finishing on the 5km climb known as The Tumble, the stage was the hardest in recent Tour of Britain history and as expected it all came down to a battle between the climbers on the ascent. Jack Bauer (Garmin-Sharp) launched an early attack and Zardini quickly bridged the gap.

Leaving the Kiwi behind, the Italian built an advantage of 15 seconds over the splintering peloton from which Nicolas Roche attacked. The Irishman bridged the gap, dropped Zardini and seemed to be taking the win.

However, Roche started to fade and Zardini managed to rejoin him before launching another stinging attack. Roche had no response and from there he increased his advantage all the way to the line. Michal Kwiatkowski (Omega Pharma-Quick Step) made a great sprint out of the small chase group to pass Roche just before the line, scoring important bonus seconds and gaining 5 seconds on Bradley Wiggins (Sky) who paced his way up the climb to take fifth.

"I live in Verona and today was very like many of the training rides I do around my home in Verona so it suited me fine," said a delighted Zardini afterwards. "I knew this climb had the reputation of being possibly the best in Britain and it lived up to its reputation. It very tough but for me it was a beautiful climb today. 

"I was never in trouble when Nicolas came up to join me. After attacking I was pacing my effort because I knew there would be more to do. I let him go past and perhaps I kidded to be tired a little bit but actually I was feeling fine all the time and soon decided to go back on the attack. I felt fantastic and was able to enjoy the moment and all the support of the fans at the top. 

”It is an amazing success! It is still hard to believe what happened. I know that my shape is really good, last week all went well and I came here with good sensations. Today the whole team made a superb work for me and Bongiorno.

"During the stage I talked with [sports director] Roberto Reverberi and we planned to attack at the bottom of the climb. I did it. While I climbed fast I alwas had a little margin for the final decisive km where I knew that there could be some attacks from behind. When Roche bridged, I used the last energy and when we arrived at the last km I attacked again. I pulled away solo and gave it my all until the finish line.

"We are not a big team but we enjoy taking on the big team and we have had great success. We won three stages of the Giro this year and last year Stefano Pirazzi won the King of the Mountains at the Giro. 

"We have come here to be aggressive and to race and we will fight hard to defend the jersey. I think we will probably need to try and find some more second somewhere in the other hard stages because obviously riders like Wiggins and Kwiatkowski will be very strong in the Time Trial. It will be difficult but we will try."

”Edoardo made an incredible number, doing what we always believed he could do," Reverberi said. "He climbed at a really fast tempo, he never gave up. When Roche arrived, he remained focused and had energy to attack again. From tomorrow a different kind of race will start for us. Now the goal is to keep that jersey, at least to the final time trial."