Tour de Suisse stage 1: Stephen Williams kicks for reduced sprint victory

Stephen Williams (Bahrain Victorious) kicked to sprint victory at the Tour de Suisse.

The young Welshman emerged at the front of the reduced bunch on the Küsnacht hilltop, edging victory from Max Schachmann (Bora-Hansgrohe) and Andreas Kron (Lotto Soudal).

Williams takes the race’s first leader’s jersey while American rider Quinn Simmons (Trek-Segafredo) impressed in the day’s early breakaway to claim the King of the Mountains jersey.

Williams’ success saw him finish ahead of accustomed winners such as Adam Yates and Geraint Thomas (Ineos Grenadiers), Remco Evenepoel (Quick-Step Alpha Vinyl) and Jakob Fuglsang (Israel-Premier Tech).

They all flexed their legs in the tough finale, while behind other key names such as Thibaut Pinot (Groupama-FDJ) and Gino Mäder (Bahrain – Victorious) cracked and lost time.

Williams admitted he found things somewhat surreal, particularly after periods of time affected by injury.

“It is my first big race since Romandie, so it has been a good month of training. I was unsure where my form was going to be, but I knew I had done the work before this. To win the first stage from a group like that is really special,” he said.

“So far I don’t think it has sunk in yet. It has been a strange few years so to come here and win the stage is … I am over the moon.”

Stephen Williams (@BHRVictorious ) wins Stage 1 in Küsnacht:@PrimeoEnergie @searchch pic.twitter.com/OC6FcBBLQ3

— Tour de Suisse (@tds) June 12, 2022

Williams was signed by Bahrain-Victorious after a strong showing in the U23 Giro d’Italia in 2018. He took a mountain stage there, led the race for a day and finished fifth overall. He also won that year’s Ronde de l’Isard.

However he had problems with his left knee in 2019 and only saw eight days of racing.

He was subsequently diagnosed with compressive tendinopathy and underwent surgery in November of that year. Doctors removed a small bone in his knee and this set him on a gradual road back to fitness. 2020 was a quiet season, but he did considerably more racing last year and went on to win a stage plus the overall classification in the Cro Race.

Thanks to the time bonus, Williams will have a four-second lead over Schachmann starting Monday’s second stage.

The 85th edition of the Tour de Suisse eschewed the traditional opening day pattern, swapping the customary time trial for a road race stage for the first time since 2008.

The race both started and finished in Küsnacht, taking in four laps of a mountainous 45.7-kilometer circuit. Each lap would see the riders scale the climb of Pfannenstiel and then the Küsnachter Berg, with the finish line coming soon after the summit of the latter.

In all the riders would cover 177.6km with an altitude gain of close to 2,800 meters.

The tough opening stage didn’t deter seven riders, who clipped away shortly after the start. Americans Simmons and Chad Haga (Human Powered Health) were present in the group, along with Casper Pedersen (DSM), Johan Jacobs (Movistar Team), Simon Vitzthum (Swiss Cycling), Jay Vine (Alpecin – Fenix) and Lewis Askey (Groupama – FDJ).

These worked well together and had a gap of over three minutes starting the second lap.

Simmons was on a mission, taking the intermediate sprint on laps two and three, and also winning the mountain prime both times atop the Küsnachter Berg.

Two second places on the circuit’s other ascent, the Pfannenstiel, put him in a very strong position, and he would ultimately end the day wearing the climber’s jersey.

#TourdeSuisse 🇨🇭
Seems like @QuinnSimmons9 has something for mountains jerseys. (He won the mountains classification at Tirreno-Adriatico).

He takes the lead after Stage 1 in the mountains classification. A just reward for his breakaway effort today. 💪 🙌 pic.twitter.com/uZtvdmNyNe

— Trek-Segafredo (@TrekSegafredo) June 12, 2022

Back in the peloton, things became more active heading towards the end of the penultimate lap when former world champion Philippe Gilbert (Lotto Soudal) launched a move and dragged four others clear. These were reeled in just before the start/finish line but the acceleration in pace saw the break’s advantage drop to just 57 seconds with one lap to go.

Simmons continued his aggressive performance, taking the final intermediate sprint ahead of Haga and Vitzthum. Those three plus Petersen pushed ahead of the other two on the last ascent of the Pfannenstiel, where Simmons was best and made sure of his King of the Mountains lead.

He visibly relaxed after his prime win, easing off and drifting back to the bunch. In contrast, Vitzthum took the opposite approach by putting the hammer down and going ahead alone, determined to keep driving despite the bunch closing to just 20 seconds at that point.

Haga and Petersen were also fully committed and came back up to him, the trio continued onwards together heading into the final 15km.

Meanwhile the peloton was becoming a lot more active, with riders such as Ineos Grenadiers’ Thomas and Tom Pidcock pushing forward to stay out of trouble before the start of the final climb.

Quick-Step Alpha Vinyl was also prominent and moved to the front at the start of the last ascent of the Küsnachter Berg, stretching things out and reducing the gap to just five seconds. Vitzthum wasn’t done yet and pulled clear once again but, somewhat inevitably, was overtaken with some 6.5km remaining.

The big guns began to fire at that point, with Evenepoel and Fuglang amongst those trying to get a gap. Surprisingly, Pinot was going in the opposite direction, losing contact as did Bahrain’s GC hope Mäder.

Evenepoel and Fuglsang’s effort saw them hold a slight gap towards the top of the climb but were joined by 13 others at that point, just 4km from the finish line. Undeterred, Fuglsang tried again at the 3km marker, only to be reeled in by Hirschi.

A solid start for the Wolfpack at the #TourdeSuisse2022. pic.twitter.com/jGiyJCUHqL

— Quick-Step Alpha Vinyl Team (@qst_alphavinyl) June 12, 2022

A number of other probing surges followed, with Aleksandr Vlasov (Bora-Hansgrohe) and Evenepoel gapping the others and holding a slight advantage going under the kite.

However the latter’s chances of replicating his recent Tour of Norway success was snuffed out by first Thomas and then Fuglsang, who brought the rest of the group back up to the leaders.

Welshman Williams then judged things perfectly in the sprint to the line, beating Schachmann, Kron, Hirschi and the rest of the group to scoop the first WorldTour victory of his career.

It was a surprising victory to many but with some key names losing time behind, it was also well-earned. He’ll wear yellow heading into Monday’s second stage, a lumpy 198km race from Küsnacht to Aesch.