Tour de Suisse: Sagan wins stage 6

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Peter Sagan  (Tinkoff-Saxo) clinched his second win of the 2015 Tour de Suisse, comfortably sprinting to victory on stage 6 ahead of Jurgen Roelandts (Lotto-Soudal) and Alexander Kristoff (Katusha).

Sagan was well positioned going into the 90-degree right-hander just over 200m from the line, with teammate Daniel Bennati on the front. Roelandts was first to go as Bennati moved over but Sagan moved clear with ease.

Mark Cavendish, whose Etixx-QuickStep team had done a fair amount of work to bring things back together for the sprint, appeared to lose his lead-out going into that crucial corner and finished down in sixth.

Thibaut Pinot finished safely in the main group to hang onto the yellow jersey, but second-placed Geraint Thomas managed to trim five seconds off the Frenchman’s overall lead by making a small group with Cavendish. His deficit is now down to 42 seconds to Pinot.

"Etixx rode all day and controlled things," said Sagan. "I was a bit behind for the last corner and then I had to go wide around the last corner. Bennati was up there on the front for me. I was behind a rider from Lotto and then I opened my sprint and came around him."

The win is the Slovak’s fifth of the season and his fourth in the space of just over a month. After a troubled start to life at Tinkoff-Saxo, in which he was openly criticised by owner Oleg Tinkov, Sagan is showing signs of the sort of form that warranted his big-money move in the first place.

He has now drawn level with Hugo Koblet and Ferdi Kubler on 11 Suisse stage wins. Asked if the names mean anything, he said: "No. I’ll try to beat that tomorrow."

How it unfolded

In contrast to yesterday’s fireworks up at the Rettenbach glacier, today’s stage was always going to be a quieter affair, likely to end in a bunch kick. The 193km route from Wil to Biel had a few lumps, including one third-category climb, but not enough to make life too difficult for the sprinters’ teams. After the exertions of the previous day, the riders trudged along slower than the slowest predicted time schedule.

The break of the day was formed early on and was made up of Axel Domont (AG2R La Mondiale), Marek Rutkiweicz (CCC Sprandi), Matej Mohoric (Cannondale-Garmin) and Jérôme Baugnies (Wanty-Groupe Gobert). Their lead grew out to almost four minutes at one point and they stayed clear until inside 2km.

With 65km to go the rain started to pour down, which would make the technical final kilometres trickier still. The Movistar duo of Fran Ventoso and Adriano Malori livened things up with 25km remaining when they attacked from the bunch and tried to bridge across to the breakaway quarter. They made a decent go of it, getting to within 15 seconds, but their efforts only forced a higher pace on the front of the peloton from Katusha and Etixx-QuickStep and it was all back together with 1.5km to go.

Shortly before that, Zdenek Stybar and Gianluca Brambilla came unstuck on a slippery corner, which wasn’t good news for Cavendish, even if he still had three other men with him.

In the end, the Manxman found himself out of position on the final corner. Sagan didn’t, and made the most of it to burst away for another confidence-boosting win.

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