Cycling: Paddy Bevin fourth in Britain, points winner

Paddy Bevin. Photo credit: AAp

Kiwi Paddy Bevin has just missed out on a podium post, finishing fourth overall in the Tour of Britain.

Bevin completed the final stage - a 77 kilometre cycle into London in tenth position to hold onto his spot inside the top five on Monday (NZ time).

The 27-year-old had held the leader's green jersey for two stages, but lost it after a poor team time trial on Friday.

Frenchman Julian Alaphilippe won the tour - finishing 17s ahead of Team Sky's Wout Poel in second and 33s ahead of LottoNL-Jumbo rider Primoz Roglic.

Bevan finished 46s behind Alaphilippe.

On top of the fourth place finish, Bevin won the points competition for the tour.

Riders are awarded points for high finishes in a stage and for winning intermediate sprints, and these are recorded in a points classification.

Bevin finished with 67 points, 21 more than Ethan Hayer of Brittan in second.

"Overall, seven top tens finishes is an interesting reuslt and we deifnitely didn't set out to do that but it became necessary as we got to the end of week and were chasing points for the blue jersey," Bevin said after the race. 

"It would have been nice to trade those a win however overall, it was nice to finish the Tour of Britain in strong form and have a good race here at the end of the season and now I am looking forward to the UCI World Championships." 

Fellow Kiwi Dion Smith finished the tour in 18th.

Meanwhile in Spain, George Bennett has dropped to 22nd after the 15th stage of the  Vuelta a Espana.

Bennett finsiehd more than 12 minutes behind stage winner Thibaut Pinot with Miguel Angel Lopez finished second and Simon Yates in third.

Yates currently holds the leaders red jersey, 26s ahead of Alejandro Valverde, heading into Tuesday's rest day. 

Newshub. 

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