14 June 2015
IAM Cycling
The sun was white-hot and a big crowd came to encourage the riders starting the Tour of Switzerland. The atmosphere remained charged until the last rider had crossed the finish line. But Tom Dumoulin (Giant Alpecin) dampened the enthusiasm of the Swiss hoping for a home-town victory when he beat Fabian Cancellara by two seconds. The multiple time trial world champion had himself managed to dampen IAM Cyclings hopes by besting Matthias Brändle, also by only two seconds. Brändle, who is a former holder of the world hour record, ended being best among a group of teammates, all of whom put in excellent times. Aside from Brändles 3rd place, Martin Elmiger (12th) and Jérôme Coppel (14th) both finished in the top 15 in a prologue that was raced at a 53 km/h average.
After Matthias Brändle had finished with his podium duties as the best climber of the race, so far, he declared himself happy with his place despite the fact that he had waited more than two hours and a half before being pushed off the hot seat by the late starters. Im happy with my 3rd place, but I have other goals for the Tour of Switzerland. The food poisoning that hit me hard before the last stage of the Baloise Belgium Tour is all forgotten. After three days at home, I had recovered. And then I went up to the Bernina to prepare for the Tour of Switzerland; I must thank the team for supporting me so well. Today, I felt like I had really good legs, and I was determined to ride for the win. Unfortunately, I had a 58-tooth ring on, and I had some technical problems as a result, which probably cost me a second or two. But I still have some things to prove in the next couple of days, and I want to be around for the time trial in Bern too on the last day.
listen to Audio Finish – TDS prolog – Jérôme Coppel on audioBoom
For his part, Marcello Albasini, the trainer in charge of the time triallists as well as the directeur sportif, was quite pleased with his teams performance. The guys really gave the best of themselves. Matthias Brändle came very close to the victory just two weeks after having had some pretty difficult health problems in Belgium. This means that everything is clearly back on track for him, and he has made use of his altitude training perfectly. As for Martin Elmiger, unfortunately, his group of riders went when the wind was much stronger in the late afternoon, though that failed to bother Dumoulin or Cancellara. And Jérôme Coppel put in an encouraging ride after having been out for many weeks after his crash in the Tour of the Basque Country.
