photo credits @ Tour de Suisse/Twitter
excerpts from Tour de Suisse
Dumoulin takes the stage – Spilak wins overall
Tom Dumoulin finished this year’s Tour de Suisse in the same way he started it, by winning against the clock. Simon Spilak ended third on the stage and thereby won the general classification just five seconds in front of Geraint Thomas.
Sunday’s final stage of Tour de Suisse was a 38.4 km undulating time trial around Bern. The course was the same one the riders tackled on stage 8. Everybody knew what was waiting but that didn’t make the suffering any easier.
One of the first riders on the starting ramp was Fabian Cancellara (Trek). The Swiss time trial specialist is from Bern and, naturally, he had high hopes for this stage. Cancellara finished second in the opening prologue and today, he aimed to do one better. After a great fight against the clock, he crossed the finishing line in 48:55 minutes. Neither the Italian national champion Adriano Malori (Movistar) nor the former hour record holder Matthias Brändle (IAM Cycling) could match Cancellara’s time.
In fact, it wasn’t until the GC riders started on the course that anybody got close to the Swiss’ time splits. As expected, pre-stage favorite, Tom Dumoulin (Giant-Alpecin) set the fastest time after 21 km. However, it didn’t take long before Simon Spilak (Katusha) took many by surprise and beat the Dutchman’s time. The last 17 km produced a great drama for both the stage win and the overall victory. Geraint Thomas (Team Sky) had already overtaken Thibaut Pinot (FDJ) in the general classification but he had to keep Spilak behind him in order to win. Overall, the Slovenian was just 13 seconds behind Thomas before today’s stage.
After sitting in the hot seat for most of the day, Cancellara had to see his time beaten by Dumoulin who crossed the line in 48:36 minutes. Now, only Spilak could prevent the Dutchman from taking his second time trial win in this year’s Tour de Suisse. The Katusha leader didn’t manage to keep up his impressive start and crossed the line 17 seconds down on Dumoulin. Spilak still came out on top however. He beat Thomas with 18 seconds today and thereby won the general classification five seconds ahead of the Welshman. Dumoulin finished third overall after winning the stage. Pinot lost 1:50 minutes against the clock and ended 4th overall.
This is the third year in a row that the overall winner of Tour de Suisse doesn’t get to wear the yellow jersey until after the last stage of the race. The other leader’s jerseys didn’t change hands today. Peter Sagan (Tinkoff-Saxo) wins the points classification, Stefan Denifl (IAM Cycling) takes the KOM jersey and Steve Morabito (FDJ) ends as the best Swiss rider in the race.
Top 20 Finishers
1 Tom Dumoulin (Ned) Team Giant-Alpecin 0:48:37 2 Simon Spilak (Slo) Team Katusha 0:00:18 3 Fabian Cancellara (Swi) Trek Factory Racing 0:00:19 4 Adriano Malori (Ita) Movistar Team 0:00:34 5 Geraint Thomas (GBr) Team Sky 0:00:36 6 Bob Jungels (Lux) Trek Factory Racing 0:00:41 7 Jerome Coppel (Fra) IAM Cycling 0:00:44 8 Cameron Meyer (Aus) Orica GreenEdge 0:01:07 9 Rafal Majka (Pol) Tinkoff-Saxo 0:01:26 10 Robert Gesink (Ned) Team LottoNL-Jumbo 0:01:32 11 Danny Pate (USA) Team Sky 0:01:36 12 Silvan Dillier (Swi) BMC Racing Team 0:01:43 13 Martin Elmiger (Swi) IAM Cycling 0:01:50 14 Thibaut Pinot (Fra) FDJ.fr 15 Winner Anacona (Col) Movistar Team 0:01:52 16 Steve Morabito (Swi) FDJ.fr 0:01:53 17 Benjamin King (USA) Cannondale-Garmin Pro Cycling Team 18 Alexey Lutsenko (Kaz) Astana Pro Team 0:01:56 19 Georg Preidler (Aut) Team Giant-Alpecin 0:02:00 20 Sergio Luis Henao (Col) Team Sky 0:02:01
Final general classification after stage 9
1 Simon Spilak (Slo) Team Katusha 30:15:09 2 Geraint Thomas (GBr) Team Sky 0:00:05 3 Tom Dumoulin (Ned) Team Giant-Alpecin 0:00:19 4 Thibaut Pinot (Fra) FDJ.fr 0:00:45 5 Domenico Pozzovivo (Ita) AG2R La Mondiale 0:02:21 6 Bob Jungels (Lux) Trek Factory Racing 0:02:58 7 Miguel Angel Lopez (Col) Astana Pro Team 0:03:06 8 Steve Morabito (Swi) FDJ.fr 0:03:17 9 Robert Gesink (Ned) Team LottoNL-Jumbo 0:03:19 10 Rafal Majka (Pol) Tinkoff-Saxo 0:03:20 11 Sergio Luis Henao (Col) Team Sky 0:03:42 12 Warren Barguil (Fra) Team Giant-Alpecin 0:04:24 13 Sébastien Reichenbach (Swi) IAM Cycling 0:04:27 14 Esteban Chaves (Col) Orica GreenEdge 0:04:40 15 Kristijan Durasek (Cro) Lampre-Merida 0:05:35 16 Daniel Moreno Fernandez (Spa) Team Katusha 0:05:59 17 Ben Hermans (Bel) BMC Racing Team 0:06:19 18 Jan Bakelants (Bel) AG2R La Mondiale 0:06:52 19 Winner Anacona (Col) Movistar Team 0:07:09 20 Laurens Ten Dam (Ned) Team LottoNL-Jumbo 0:07:16
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