Tour de Suisse: Cancellara claims prologue victory

Fabian Cancellara kicked off his final Tour de Suisse before retirement in style, taking the victory in the 6.4km prologue in Baar by a slim second over Jürgen Roelandts (Lotto Soudal), with Luke Durbridge (Orica-GreenEdge) in third at two seconds.

"Having a win in my last Tour de Suisse means a lot, this stands out," Cancellara said. "I will enjoy the night and the day tomorrow in the yellow. I will do what I can to try and defend, but it's going to be a hard week, but we go on in yellow tomorrow, and that is what is nice."

Early rain storms made the race tricky for some of the early starters, including Tejay van Garderen (BMC), who finished 14 seconds down, and Peter Sagan (Tinkoff), who came in 19 seconds behind.

"We tried to be smart by going in the first wave of riders in the hope of getting better weather," van Garderen said. "Turns out we made the wrong call. I had good sensations but bad luck. It’s a long week of racing and plenty of kilometers to make up the time."

Reto Hollenstein (IAM Cycling) was the eighth rider off the ramp, and set the fastest time for much of the day before the final wave of favourites came through on somewhat drier roads. But Cancellara still faced wet sections and had to make some tough equipment choices.

"It was not fun to be standing on the start ramp and seeing the rain," Cancellara said. "You know that it will be wet roads, and I knew then it would be like a poker game. Honestly, I was really nervous for today, and for me, it was really important to win. For many reasons: it's a home race, my last time here, the history…"

"I had wheels ready at the start for wet and dry and in the end I took the tires for the dry because super slick goes better. But then I had wet roads on some of the corners, and it was hard to maintain the rhythm, the speed. I had rain from the climb to the chicane – around 2 kilometers, and the downhill was wet."

Yves Lampaert (Etixx-Quickstep) was the first to crack Hollenstein's time, but would end up outside the top 10, 10 seconds off the winning pace before the day was done.

Gorka Izagirre (Movistar) slipped ahead by fractions of a second and was in the hot seat for a short time, as the world champion Vasil Kiryienka (Sky) came through a dozen seconds slower, the short, technical course ill-suited to his abilities.

The course, however, was perfectly suited to Cancellara, who deflated the brief elation that Roelandts might have felt crossing the line with the best time. The Swiss rider made up an eight second deficit at the halfway point to speed to victory by a single second.

Durbridge, who led at the check by seven seconds, finished two seconds back at the line. Alex Dowsett (Movistar) crashed on the second leg, and finished a distant 1:10 behind.

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