Tour de Suisse 2014 – Stage 1 Preview

By David Hunter

We open with a short ITT.

It’s 9.4km and has a big hill near the end! The climb is 2.5km at 7.2%. This means it will hurt.

The section before the climb will see the powerful riders do well, but non-climbers will struggle on the hill. We then have a fairly technical descent into town.

We have the best 3 TT riders, in the world, at the race: Tony Martin, Fabian Cancellara and Bradley Wiggins.

Tony Martin has been climbing very well this season, but even he will find it difficult to win this stage.

Cancellara crashed recently and is riding with a lot of bandages. I don’t think he can win the stage.

Wiggins was flying in California and this TT looks right up his street. He knows a big win will hurt his GC rivals.

2nd in California was Rohan Dennis and he should be capable of another good performance in this TT.

Rui Costa, Kreuziger, Pozzovivo and Mollema should all be capable of making the top 10.

The rider who will surprise a few is Peter Sagan. Back in 2012, he won the 7.3km prologue, at this race. That day he beat Cancellara into 2nd. The stage involved a climb and a descent, so quite similar to this year. He is more than capable of making the podium, hopefully he’ll go full gas.

Prediction time…

I’ll go with Wiggins.

*Related:Tour de Suisse overall preview:https://bicis.frangandara.net/tour-de-suisse-2014-overall-preview/

David Hunter

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