Tour de Suisse: Durasek solos to stage 2 win

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Kristijan Durasek (Lampre-Merida) snapped up victory on stage two of the Tour de Suisse with a canny attack in the final kilometre while Tom Dumoulin (Giant-Alpecin) retained the yellow jersey of race leader.

The finale of the stage saw the peloton tackle two laps of a circuit around Risch-Rotkreuz that included the climb of the Michaelskreuz, which saw some pyrotechnics from the general classification contenders on the second time around.

Jakob Fulgang (Astana) whittled down the peloton with a testing attack near the summit that only Geraint Thomas (Sky) and Simon Spilak (Katusha) could initially follow, while another overall contender, world champion Michal Kwiatkowski (Etixx-QuickStep) had already slipped backwards on the early slopes.

Dumoulin responded on the descent, chasing in the company of Thibaut Pinot (FDJ), Dani Moreno (Katusha), Miguel Angel Lopez (Astana), Julian Arredondo (Trek Factory Racing) and Durasek, and they bridged to the leaders to form what proved to be the winning move.

Thomas attempted a flyer by himself towards the base of the descent, though he was reeled back in as the road flattened out, and the nine leaders thrashed out a working alliance robust enough to hold off a chasing group that featured Peter Sagan (Tinkoff-Saxo).

Rather than wait for a sprint, Durasek decided to spring a surprise attack within sight of the red kite and the Croatian’s invention was rewarded with stage victory. Neither Astana nor Katusha could make their numbers count as Durasek crossed the line four seconds clear of his breakaway companions.

Moreno beat Arredondo in the sprint for second place, while Dumoulin finished safely at the rear of the group to hold on to the overall lead. Thomas moves up to second place, seven seconds back, while Moreno is in third, at 11 seconds.

Sagan’s group, meanwhile, closed to within 14 seconds by the finish, but the Slovak had to settle for winning the sprint for 10th place. He now lies in 5th place overall, 15 seconds behind Dumoulin.

"As I said Yesterday, I will try to keep the jersey as long as possible and after today I have it for at least one extra day," Dumoulin said of his GC aspirations. "Today was a difficult stage, which we knew upfront. I did everything to keep the jersey and I succeeded. By consolidating the lead after today’s stage, my GC chances increase a bit. It remains hard to predict what to expect about my final GC, as I’ve returned from the team’s altitude camp and I may get a setback from that, hopefully this happens on a sprinters stage."

"Only the mountain top finish at the Rettenbachgletcher on Wednesday worries me a little and I will loose time there. I hope the time lost will not be too extreme so that I can strike again at the closing time trail in Bern."

The early part of the stage was animated by a breakaway featuring Luka Pibernik (Lampre-Merida), Cameron Meyer (Orica-GreenEdge), Jurgen Roelandts (Lotto Soudal) and Valerio Agnoli (Astana), though they were never allowed much more than two minutes over the peloton.

Meyer was virtual yellow jersey for much of the day, and he pulled away with Pibernik on the first ascent of the Michaelskreuz. They still had a minute in hand by the second time up the climb, but Etixx-QuickStep’s tempo soon ended their resistance.

The stage honours would fall to Durasek, who impressed in winning the Tour of Turkey last month and who described his win on Sunday as the biggest of his career to date.

"This is my first victory in a World Tour race, I'm happy and proud because a very good season is going on in the best way after the victory in the Tour of Turkey," Durasek said. "My legs gave me positive feedback in the important moments, so I could ask them for extra efforts to attack, since I was aware I was not the fastest rider of the head group, the final attack gave me the victory."

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