World champion Peter Sagan broke out a new celebration as he won Wednesday’s fifth stage while Damiano Caruso maintained his overall lead at the Tour de Suisse.
For Sagan, it was his 14th stage win at the race over the last seven years as he took victory in the 222km ride from Bex to Cevio ahead of Michael Albasini (Orica-Scott) and Matteo Trentin (Quick-Step Floors). Bora-hansgrohe’s rider broke out into some arm waving resembling a hula dance as he crossed the finish line.
Damiano Caruso maintained his 16-second lead over Steven Kruijswijk with Domenico Pozzovivo of Italy third at 25sec.
It was a terrible day for last year’s champion Miguel Angel Lopez of Colombia, who was taken to hospital after crashing badly on a fast descent midway through the stage.
At that point there was a six-man breakaway that had eked out a lead of six minutes at one stage. But its last two remnants, Ben King and Jesper Asselman, were caught with just 6km remaining.
Thursday’s 166.7km sixth stage from Locarno to La Punt has an uphill finish that should see the overall contenders do battle.
“I’m very happy for this victory because the BORA-hansgrohe riders really sacrificed themselves today”, said Sagan. “We went all in at the end of the stage and my teammates got me to the finish. I’m so happy with this win – it was very good for the team and I couldn’t have done it without them. It took a little while to get this win – the first road stage was a little mad, with attacks and a really hectic finish, then two days ago it was a good finish but I’d put in a big effort before to get up the final climb. Today was really good for me though. There was a bit of rain but I felt much better in the end and managed to keep my head in the finale.”
https://youtu.be/qQum52SeQGE
Tour de Suisse 2017 – stage 5 results (Bex – Cevio):
| 1 | Peter Sagan (Bora-hansgrohe) | 5:15:50 |
| 2 | Michael Albasini (Orica-Scott) | ,, |
| 3 | Matteo Trentin (Quick-Step Floors) | ,, |
| 4 | Patrick Bevin (Cannondale-Drapac) | ,, |
| 5 | Niccolo Bonifazio (Bahrain Merida) | ,, |
| 6 | Michael Matthews (Team Sunweb) | ,, |
| 7 | Sacha Modolo (UAE Team Emirates) | ,, |
| 8 | Oscar Gatto (Astana) | ,, |
| 9 | Aaron Gate (Aqua Blue Sport) | ,, |
| 10 | Owain Doull (Team Sky) | ,, |
General classification after stage 5:
| 1 | Damiano Caruso (BMC) | 17:24:24 |
| 2 | Steven Kruijswijk (LottoNl-Jumbo) | +15” |
| 3 | Domenico Pozzovivo (AG2R) | +24” |
| 4 | Simon Spilak (Katusha-Alpecin) | ,, |
| 5 | Marc Soler (Movistar) | +31” |
| 6 | Mathias Frank (AG2R) | +33” |
| 7 | Mikel Nieve (Team Sky) | +01’09” |
| 8 | Rui Costa (UAE Team Emirates) | +01’10” |
| 9 | Valerio Conti (UAE Team Emirates) | +01’20” |
| 10 | Tao Geoghegan Hart (Team Sky) | +01’38” |
