Tour of Britain 100,000 spectators saw a long break by Bradley Wiggins last until the penultimate lap, before Enrico Degano of Team Barloworld took the sprint on the line. The Colombian Mauricio Ardila, of Chocolade Jacques, won the General Classification. The 2005 race was run as a UCI 2.1 category in six stages starting in Glasgow on 30 August and finishing in London on 4 September. The 2006 Tour of Britain took place from 29 August to 3 September as a UCI category 2.1 event. Martin Pedersen and Andy Schleck of Team CSC won the overall and King of the Mountains classification, respectively.
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,