I ran into this today and got it to work with:
EXECUTE sp_rename N'dbo.table_name.original_field_name', N'new_field_name', 'COLUMN'
To get this syntax, I followed Martin Smith's advice above - open up the table in design view, rename the column and then click table designer | generate change script. This produced the script below which does the renaming in two steps:
/* To prevent any potential data loss issues, you should review this script in
detail before running it outside the context of the database designer.*/
BEGIN TRANSACTION
SET QUOTED_IDENTIFIER ON
SET ARITHABORT ON
SET NUMERIC_ROUNDABORT OFF
SET CONCAT_NULL_YIELDS_NULL ON
SET ANSI_NULLS ON
SET ANSI_PADDING ON
SET ANSI_WARNINGS ON
COMMIT
BEGIN TRANSACTION
GO
EXECUTE sp_rename N'dbo.table_name.original_field_name', N'Tmp_new_field_name_1', COLUMN'
GO
EXECUTE sp_rename N'dbo.table_name.Tmp_new_field_name_1', N'new_field_name', 'COLUMN'
GO
ALTER TABLE dbo.table_name SET (LOCK_ESCALATION = TABLE)
GO
COMMIT