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
Tour of Britain racing but a British version of the Tour de France. The first multi-day stage race in Britain was the Southern Grand Prix in Kent in August 1944. It was won by Les Plume of Manchester. The first stage was won by Percy Stallard, the organiser of the Llangollen-Wolverhampton race in 1942. The experience encouraged the BLRC to run a bigger race, the Victory Cycling Marathon, to celebrate the end of the war in 1945. It ran from Brighton to Glasgow in five stages and was won by Robert Batot of France, with Frenchmen taking six of the top 10 places,