Pre-race favourite for the Tour de Suisse, Ben O’Connor, took advantage of the chaotic and aggressive racing early in the 127.2km stage 1, slipping into a 29-rider break that also included his Jayco-AlUla teammates Luke Durbridge and Felix Engelhardt.
The Australian was able to gain over two minutes on his closest GC rivals, including João Almeida (UAE Team Emirates-XRG), on the eight-day stage race.
“A pretty crazy day actually. I didn't really expect to find myself off the front with Durbo and Felix. But in the end, we actually made some pretty huge ground on GC with a bit of an opportunistic move,” O’Connor said via team social media.
Taking full advantage of the chaos as a storm was brewing, O’Connor’s teammates did the majority of the pacemaking in the break to stretch out the gap to over three minutes to the peloton.
Under the impetus of Jayco, and in a downpour, the escapees pushed their lead to a maximum of 3:40 with 56km to go on the hilly stage featuring a closing loop with two climbs, the Adligenswilerstrasse and the more difficult Michaelskreuzstrasse at 12km to go to the finish in Küssnacht.
The alarm bells rang behind in the peloton, as UAE Team Emirates-XRG, Ineos Grenadiers, Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe, Soudal-QuickStep, and Decathlon-AG2R La Mondiale worked to shorten the leash to the move, even if it included some of their teammates.
With the gap falling under three minutes, O’Connor took the front of the break, setting a hard pace and shelling riders off the back on the Michaelskreuzstrasse. Still, three riders were able to come over before the top of the ascent and managed to create a gap on the wet descent.
O’Connor continued to lead the chase group, crossing the line 1:07 behind stage winner Romain Grégoire (Groupama-FDJ) for fifth place. The peloton raced in, over two minutes later.
O’Connor now sits in fifth place overall, 1:17 down but, more importantly, he now has a 2:05 cushion to Almeida, Felix Gall (Decathlon-AG2R La Mondiale), Oscar Onley (Picnic-PostNL) and the other GC contenders.
“I felt great, just missed a little bit on top of the climb,” O’Connor added.
“But all in all, it's a huge, huge gain for the GC. So yeah, actually pretty happy about it. It was sweet to get stuck in to real, true racing today.”
Though the upcoming stages are hilly, where anything can happen, the key GC battle is expected to occur on the 184.5km stage 5, the queen stage of this year’s Tour de Suisse. The peloton will first tackle the Julierpass at 2,284 metres above sea level, the highest mountain of this year's race, followed by the San Bernardino Pass (2,065 metres above sea level). The stage concludes with a testing climb to Santa Maria in Calanca, a new finish for the race.
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