Tour of Britain Lars Boom. The 2012 Tour of Britain was held from 9 to 16 September. Jonathan Tiernan-Locke originally won the event, the first British rider to do so since its relaunch. In 2014, following investigation for biological passport irregularities, Tiernan-Locke was banned for two years and stripped of his 2012 title. The race was retrospectively awarded to Australia's Nathan Haas, riding for the Garmin-Sharp team. Mark Cavendish, in his last race as World Champion, won three stages including the final stage in an uphill sprint up Guildford's cobbled high street. Tour de France 2012 winner, Bradley Wiggins was forced to pull
2007 Tour of Britain won the overall race, Mark Cavendish won the Points competition and Ben Swift won the Mountains competition. The tour started with a 2.5 km prologue time trial at the Crystal Palace National Sports Centre. The leader's yellow jersey was claimed by Britain's Mark Cavendish in a time of two minutes 27.6 seconds, ahead of two Russian riders. As a result, Cavendish was the first British rider to take yellow since the Tour of Britain resumed in 2004. The result was debated as the electronic timing system did not turn up and the timing was thus completed with basic stopwatches. Prologue