Italy's Vincenzo Nibali has won the second stage of the Tour de France and wrested the race leader's yellow jersey as several race favorites led a late breakaway.
The Astana rider led the bunch at the end of Sunday's 125-mile ride over nine rolling hills and through the heath of Yorkshire, England.
Marcel Kittel, a powerful sprinter who often struggles in climbs, trailed far behind and lost the yellow jersey that he had captured by winning Stage 1.
Massive crowds lined the route from York to Sheffield. One of the British stars in the race, Mark Cavendish, dropped out before Stage 2 amid pain from a separated right shoulder sustained in a crash Saturday.
England is hosting the first three stages of the three-week race before it enters France.
While Yorkshire doesn't have ascents on a par with the Alps or Pyrenees in France, riders faced nine low- to mid-grade climbs. The hardest was the 4.7-kilometer Holme Moss pass, and the steepest was also the shortest: The 800-meter Jenkin Road pass, with an average gradient of 10.8 percent — just 5 kilometers from the finish line.
England is hosting the first three stages of the three-week race before it enters France.
New roads for cycling's greatest race also mean new audiences, some of whom are so enthusiastic and eager for a selfie with the pack that they don't realize the hazards of getting too close to the riders as they whirr by. There are simply too many people for barriers that race organizers erect in crowded spots, making the course more treacherous for the riders.
On the up-and-down, picturesque course, the 197-rider peloton scaled a narrow, cobblestone hill in Haworth, where the Bronte sisters — the famous 19th-century novelists — lived when their father was parson in the town.
Monday's stage should be a far less grueling ride: Riders cover 155 kilometers (96 miles) from university town Cambridge to London, where the pack will finish on the Mall not far from Big Ben and Westminster Abbey.
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