Fribourg, Switzerland - Ricardo Serrano of Spain won a shortened first stage of the Tour de Romandie on Wednesday and Gregory Rast took the yellow jersey after they led a breakaway for much of the race.
Serrano edged out Lars Bak of Denmark in second and the third-placed Swiss rider in a sprint to the line as the trio finished some 30 seconds ahead of the peloton on the shortened stage between the Swiss towns of Montreux and Fribourg.
Snow in the Alps deprived the six-day tour of western Switzerland of its biggest climbs, as the stage was cut to less than 88km instead of their scheduled 176 and rubbed out the 1 504 metre Jaunpass.
Continues Below ↓
That deprived the climbers of their thunder and the trio quickly took advantage of the wet conditions by opening up a lead of nearly four minutes 50km from the finish line.
Twenty four year-old Californian Steven Cozza failed in a lone attempt to reel in the breakaway trio and the peloton only woke in the final half of the race.
Rast took advantage of bonus points on the way to take over the yellow jersey from prologue winner Czech rider Frantisek Rabon and open up a five second lead over Serrano in the overall standings followed by Bak.
Frenchman Sandy Casar was lying in wait just 35 seconds behind in fifth place, just ahead of race favourite Alejandro Valverde in seventh.
|
StumbleUpon
Reddit
Digg
Delicious
Newsvine
Facebook
muti
Twitter
