Jan Bakelants from Radioshack Leopard has held on from a fast-finishing peloton to win the 153km second stage of the Tour de France from Bastia to Ajaccio and take the yellow jersey from Marcel Kittel.
He leads Briton David Millar of Garmin-Sharp in the overall classification by one second.
Belgian Bakelants, part of a six-man breakaway on the final climb of the run into the Corsican town of Ajaccio, won by one second ahead Slovakian Peter Sagan from Team Cannondale.
Polish rider Michal Kwiatowski of Omega Pharma-Quick Step was third.
The win is Bakelants first in professional cycling.
The stage provided plenty of jostling by the big guns, with the peloton split in two on the second climb after a fierce pace set at the front by French team FDJ-Bigmat.
Most of the top sprinters were on the wrong end of the split, including green jersey favourite Mark Cavendish of Omega Pharma-Quick Step and Marcel Kittel of Argos Shimano, winner of stage one and wearer of the yellow jersey, who finished more than twelve minutes back.
Team Sky, BMC, Saxo-Bank, Sojasun and Cannondale then took over, forcing the pace and keeping the second group from making it back across the divide while looking after their team leaders.
Several riders made attempts to get ahead of the leading group, including race favourite Chris Froome.
Froome attacked with a burst of speed on the final climb to get some distance on his rivals, but was quickly pulled back by the other riders at the front, including BMC’s Cadel Evans.
Sylvain Chavenel of Omega Pharma-Quick Step attacked with less than 7km to go and a group of five other riders, including Bakelants, joined him at the front.
Bakelants was the only rider not to be chased down by the peloton in the final kilometer and held on for a famous win.
Pierre Rolland of Europcar took the polka dot jersey as leader in the King of the Mountain classification, Kwiatowski the white jersey for best young rider while yesterday’s stage winner, Kittel of Argos-Shimano had some consolation on the day by keeping the lead in the green jersey.
The Tour continues for the third and last day in Corsica with the 145.5km stage 3 from Ajaccio to Calvi, before heading to the mainland for stage 4.
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