Tour de Suisse: Dennis takes out final time trial

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Simon Spilak (Katusha-Alpecin) took the overall victory at the Tour de Suisse as Rohan Dennis book-ended his race with time trial victories. Spilak put in a solid effort on the 28.6km stage 9 time trial to maintain a comfortable lead at the top of the standings.

First race leader Dennis lived up to his moniker of pre-stage favourite by putting in a superb effort to win the stage by 29 seconds over his teammate Stefan Küng. Damiano Caruso gained time on Spilak and gave BMC a podium lock-out but was unable to erase the 52-second gap to take back the yellow jersey from the Slovenian.

“I can’t really pick between the two [victories] I came here with the goal to win both the time trials and get back into the swing of racing. For us, it was a good day with the top three places and second overall for Damiano Caruso. It has been a really good week,” Dennis said after the stage.

“I just switch my brain off and go hard. Obviously, it’s really calculated with what I do on the flats, the climb and the downhills with the power at the same time you just have to not think about the pain and try to go as fast as possible.”

The Tour de Suisse concluded with its longest time trial since 2011 at 28.6 kilometres. Jon Dibben (Team Sky) started proceedings but it was Ryan Mullen that laid down the first true benchmark with his time of 38:29 but the organisers had predicted a much quicker time to be the winning one of the day and so it was.

Dennis blasted through all of the checkpoints in the fastest position and would beat Mullen’s time by almost two minutes, exceeding even the fastest predictions of the organisers. Dennis’ time of 36:30 looked like one that would stand for a long time, if not right to the end.

Dennis had plenty of time to watch his rivals try to match his time but only his teammate Kung could even come close. Yellow jersey wearer Spilak was surprisingly close when he went through the first check at just seven seconds back, but he would fade in the latter stages of his effort.

Spilak went into the stage with a 52-second cushion over Caruso in the overall classification and had to avoid any problems and he was fairly assured of the overall win. Caruso could not overtake Spilak but did more than enough to ensure he kept third-placed Steven Kruijswijk at bay.

Further down the standings, Ion Izagirre (Bahrain-Merida) managed to move from eight in the standings to sixth while Mathias Frank (AG2R La Mondiale) won the Swiss rider classification but slipped down after a disappointing showing over the course.

Both Lasse Norman Hansen (Aqua Blue Sport) and Peter Sagan (Bora-Hansgrohe) finished the stage to claim victory in the mountains and points classifications respectively.

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