Sørensen claims Austrian mountain stage

Danish climber Chris Anker Sørensen (Team CSC-Saxo Bank) repeated his solo victory at last month's Dauphiné Libéré with a brilliant ride on the Tour of Austria's 170-kilometre second stage from Toblach to Kitzbühler Horn (Alpenhaus). Sørensen was able to gain enough time to take over the race lead at the mountain-top finish, on the same day he was named in his nation's Olympic Games squad for Beijing, China this August (see seperate story).

"This morning we'd agreed that Chris Anker was going to be captain for the day because he seemed the strongest and had the biggest chance of winning this stage. It was great for him to show that his victory in Dauphiné Libéré wasn't just a one-off," said Team CSC Saxo Bank sports director Torsten Schmidt.

"Tomorrow we'll have to try and defend the Yellow Jersey in another mountain stage and after that the next two stages should be sprinter stages ahead of the time trial on Saturday. If Chris still has the jersey by then we'll see, because he's improved his time trial a lot so it's not unthinkable that he could win the whole race," concluded Schmidt.

Sørensen's closest competitors on the stage were Thomas Rohregger (Elk Haus-Simplon), who finished 12 seconds behind, and Rusland Podgornyy (LPR Brakes), who was 27" back. Astana's Vladimir Gusev brought up fourth place, and the general classification looks the same.