Better suited to the uphill kick in Stirling, Ewan easily overpowered Bennett on the run in to the finish, hitching a ride in the final few hundred metres on the Deceuninck-Quick-Step train before quickly speeding past the Irishman.
Daryl Impey (Mitchelton-Scott) and Nathan Haas (Cofidis) barely troubled him for the win as they rounded out the podium, both grabbing vital bonus seconds for their general classification hunt.
"Yesterday it really didn't go to plan," new race leader Ewan said. "And I think we spoke for about an hour in the room on what we can do, what we can do better.
"The boys did an absolutely perfect job today. They did everything I asked for. When you take a win like that you really can't do it on your own."
A crash within the final two kilometres brought down Australian Richie Porte (Trek-Segafredo), who hurt his knee but he is OK.
"I banged my knee a bit, but all okay," Trek-Segafredo tweeted, quoting Porte. "The guys were awesome, really impressive today."
Sprinter Elia Viviani was not so lucky. While he didn’t break anything, he grazed a large part of his left side and will assess with the team whether he will continue the race.
Joey Rosskopf (CCC) was in the break again today, this time claiming all the KOM points to now lead that classification. He escaped with young Australian rider Sam Jenner (UniSA) after just three minutes of racing. A minute later, Omer Goldstein (Israel Start-Up) and Laurens De Vreese (Astana) unhooked from the peloton, joining the leading pair just after the first KOM in Charleston.
With the finish all to play for, the peloton kept the quartet’s lead to around two minutes. Just as the bunch looked like they captured their prey, De Vreese bolted away with just under 40 kilometres to go, dangling out the front until he too was swallowed up 25kms from the finish.
