Tour de Suisse: Chaves wins atop Verbier

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Colombia's Johan Esteban Chaves (Orica-GreenEdge) won the eighth stage at the Tour de Suisse with a strong late-race attack on the Alpine climb up to Verbier on Saturday. Roman Kreuziger (Tinkoff-Saxo) finished three seconds behind in second with the same time as Bauke Mollema (Belkin) in third.

"We raced hard today and it was hot. That was a big factor. There were a lot of attacks but I waited until people were tired and then went for it. I think I made a good attack," Chaves said of his win.

The 24 year-old is part of the new generation of Colombian climbers emerging from South America and this was his second mahor win of the season after also winning at Mountain High at the Tour of California in May.

"There are a lot of strong Colombians and it’s a great thing," he said. "I don’t know why Colombian cycling has always been strong. Riders stopped coming through for a while but now we’re stronger than ever and so everyone is very happy."

Tony Martin (Omega Pharma-QuickStep) defended his leader's yellow jersey with a well-judged effort on the final climb. He finished in a chase group but was only 17 seconds behind Chaves. He even managed to gain time on his nearest rivals ahead of the final mountain stage on Sunday. Martin now leads Tom Dumoulin (Gaint-Shimano) by 51 seconds and world champion Rui Costa (Lampre-Merida) by 1:05 minutes.

How it happened

The Tour de Suisse entered the mountains during the penultimate stage, which was the first of two mountainous stages at the race this week. The peloton raced 219km from Delémont to Verbier with one major climb at the end of the stage that began with a Cat. 3 section and finished with a HC section on route to the finish line.

An early breakaway formed with Jose Joaquin Rojas (Movistar), Christian Knees (Team Sky), Sébastien Minard (Ag2r-La Mondiale), Danilo Wyss (BMC), Gregory Rast (Trek Factory Racing), Nathan Brown (Garmin-Sharp) and Laurens De Vreese (Wanty-Groupe Gobert). Mateusz Taciak (CCC) also joined the breakaway and the eight riders opened an advantage of over six minutes half way through the race. Rojas was the best placed overall, 3:59 minutes behind Martin coming into the stage, and became the virtual race leader.

Their gap dropped to 4:30 minutes as the race approached the final ascent with 30km to go. Back in the peloton, several teams organized themselves at the front of the field; Giant-Shimano, Team Europcar, Lampre-Merida and FDJ all set a quick pace. Omega Pharma-QuickStep tried to keep their race leader Martin safely tucked in the field near the front to conserve as much energy as possible ahead of the climb to Verbier.

The first section of the ascent to the finish was 10km long and gradually gained from 400m to 800m, topping out just after Vollèges. Rojas was the first of the breakaway riders to reach the top of the initial climb and several of his companions were dropped. After a short descent, the road kicked up again, with the climb to the finish lasting 13.4km. It was the same climb where Alberto Contador famously blew the Tour de France apart in 2009 and took the yellow jersey.

Knees made his move on the lower slopes up to Verbier, with nine kilometres to go, but he was quickly followed by Rojas, De Vreese, Wyss and Brown. Wyss played his hand just under eight kilometers to go and opened a small lead but the peloton closed in quickly, picked up the remaining breakaway riders, and held the solo escapee at under a minute with six kilometers to the go. Behind IAM Cycling took control of the peloton to set up Mathias Frank for a strong finish. Martin positioned himself near the front and tried to hang on to the more notable climbers in the bunch.

There several other attacks from the group of overall contenders. South African champion Louis Meintjes (MTN Qhubeka) surged and opened a 100m gap on the field to join Bjorn Thurau (Team Europcar) the leader of the climber’s competition and the pair worked together to catch Wyss. However the trio were no match for Belkin’s quick chase and the team led the field of roughly 30 riders up the steeper sections of the ascent to bring them back.

The diminished field included only the strongest climbers inside the last four kilometers but Martin showed his climbing ability as he held onto the pace, trying to stay as close to the front of the race as possible.

Frank was the next to make move but Kreuziger quickly latched onto his wheel. As the peloton reeled them in, Chaves took his opportunity to jump clear of the field with two kilometers to go. Italian neo-pro Davide Formolo (Canndonale) tried to bridge the gap but couldn’t hold onto the fast pace and was quickly dropped.

Chaves was strong and determined. He held his gap on the descent to the finish in the centre of Verbier and secured the stage win with Kreuziger and Mollema coming in just three seconds behind him. Eros Capecchi (Movstar) and Janier Acevedo (Garmin-Sharp) gained a few extra seconds ahead of Martin’s yellow jersey group that also included Costa, Formolo, Frank and Philip Deignan (Team Sky). However Martin proved he can climb and perhaps tipped the chance of overall victory in his favour with just one stage left to race.

The Tour de Suisse heads into the ninth and final stage’s 157km race from Martigny to Saas-Fee on Sunday. It includes four climbs and ends with a HC category climb but the 2014 Tour de Suisse is now Martin's race to loose.

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