Tour de Suisse: Kristoff pips Sagan to win stage 7 in Düdingen

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Alexander Kristoff’s outstanding 2015 season continued on Friday as the Katusha rider outsprinted Peter Sagan (Tinkoff-Saxo) on stage 7 of the Tour de Suisse.

As the riders approached the end of the 165km route from Biel to Düdingen, the Norwegian sat in second wheel behind Sagan’s teammate Daniele Bennati and launched his sprint with 200 metres to go. The Slovak was in fourth position behind José Joaquin Rojas (Movistar), and a costly gap opened when Kristoff opened his sprint. Although Sagan made up considerable ground, Kristoff managed to hold him off to take the win. Davide Cimolai (Lampre-Merida) came home a distant third.

It is Kristoff’s 18th win of a season in which he has been the most prolific fast man in the peloton.

“My team did a good job to bring me to the front,” said Kristoff, recognising the shifts his teammates did on the front of the bunch in the final 10 kilometres to bring back the break.

“It was a hard day, I haven’t felt super in this Tour de Suisse but I did a good sprint today. I got ahead of Sagan and I was able to go again at the end to hold off his run. I felt I had him but it was hard with the uphill run to the line. The team did an awesome job and I’m happy with how I finished it off in the end.”

For the second day running, Thibaut Pinot saw another five seconds shaved off his overall lead after finding himself the wrong side of a split in the closing stages. Geraint Thomas (Sky) is now 37 seconds back in second and given his superior time trialling ability, Pinot may be made to pay come the final stage.

How it unfolded

Despite Katusha, Tinkoff-Saxo, and Giant-Alpecin all working to ensure a sprint, there were nervy moments as things only came together very late on, and the last surviving breakaway member Michal Kwiatkowsi (Etixx-QuickStep) was caught just 500 metres from the line.

It was the world champion who was in an attacking mindset from the off, putting in numerous digs before he was allowed to go clear. He was joined by Silvan Dillier (BMC), Daryl Impey (Orica-GreenEdge) and Axel Domont (Ag2r-La Mondiale) and they soon had an advantage of over three minutes.

The road to Düdingen was lumpy with four third-category climbs in the second half, the last one coming 15km from the line, which offered some hope to the quartet.

However, Tinkoff-Saxo and Giant-Alpecin made sure things didn’t get out of hand, while Etixx-QuickStep enjoyed a day off with Kwiatkowski up the road.

Impey led the break over the categorised climb at Fribourg with a lead of almost two minutes, but that dropped to just 55 seconds by the climb at St. Antoni, where Domont took the prime.

By the time the break tackled those two climbs for the second time their lead was down to half a minute and the general classification contenders started filing towards the front of the peloton.

Domont lost contact with the break on St. Antoni but the three remaining riders managed to keep their 30-second buffer until inside the final 10 kilometres. At that point, Katusha hit the front in force and the gap started to tumble accordingly. With 2km to go, the catch appeared to be made but Kwiatkowsi was having none of it. He put in another dig and remarkably managed stay clear until inside the final kilometre. It wasn’t to be, though, for the world champion, as he was finally recaptured. In the ensuing sprint, Kristoff emerged as the strongest.  

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