Porte on the attack as Andersen nabs stage 6 at the Tour de Suisse

Soren Kragh Andersen (Team Sunweb) won the sixth stage of the Tour de Suisse on Thursday as Richie Porte (BMC) strengthened his hold on the yellow jersey.

Andersen, who had been part of a six-man break, pulled away to cross the line on his own in Gommiswald at the end of a 186-kilometre stage that included two hors catégorie climbs.

He was followed home, 10 seconds later, by Nathan Haas (Katusha-Alpecin) with Gorka Izagirre (Bahrain-Merida) another 14 seconds behind.

Richie Porte finished sixth after escaping from the pack in the last few kilometres and added 12 seconds to his lead over Wilco Kelderman and Sam Oomen in the overall classification.

“It’s still a bit unreal,” Andersen said. “I didn’t expect this when I woke up this morning. I’m thankful the team gave me this opportunity to go into the break. How the team helped me in the break, it was super nice that it worked out. It was a relief for me.

“I was surprised that nobody followed Gogl when he attacked. I had to play a hard game and waited. I was with Monfort, and then after that, time was running out and to dig deep to see if I could catch up with Michael. It worked out. The whole day was super hard. It wasn’t really a day for me with three and a half thousand altitude metres. I’m quite a heavy guy, but I trained hard for it in the last few weeks so it is nice that it paid off.”

Tour de Suisse 2018 – stage 6 results (Fiesch – Gommiswald):

General classification after stage 6: