The Tour de Suisse is not the easiest race to follow. With two time trials before any of the proper mountain stages, you can’t be totally sure who’s really in contention until it’s basically over.
After winning the stage seven time trial, Tony Martin led Tom Dumoulin by 28 seconds and Rui Costa by over a minute and he retained the lead after stage eight’s summit finish, which was won by Johan Esteban Chaves.
According to Cycling News:
“The 24 year-old is part of the new generation of Colombian climbers emerging from South America.”
As opposed to those new generations of Colombian climbers which are emerging from Europe or Africa, I guess.
Stage nine was where things changed. Rui Costa – the world champion, lest we forget – won his first race of the year and, as a happy byproduct of this, his first stage race of the year as well. This shouldn’t really be an enormous surprise, being as he also won the Tour de Suisse in 2012 and 2013.
Costa attacked mid-stage and Tony Martin couldn’t hunt him down. This was largely due to there being a 20km climb to the finish. While Martin’s targeting these week-long stage races this year, he’s still not going to be rivalling the very best climbers. He’s really just looking to limit his losses when the road starts to rise.
When he went, Costa dragged Bauke Mollema and Matthias Frank with him. They finished second and third on the stage and third and second overall.
Andy Schleck was also at the Tour de Suisse.
What’s next?
You know what’s next. It starts a week on Saturday in Leeds, which must be a contender for the title ‘least French city on earth’.
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