World and Olympic time trial champion Remco Evenepoel (Soudal-QuickStep) won the stage 5 time trial at the Tour de Romandie on Sunday, as João Almeida (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) powered to second place to win the overall.
Almeida started the day three seconds down on stage 4 winner and race leader Lenny Martinez (Bahrain Victorious), and successfully overhauled the Frenchman, beating him by 30 seconds to seize the GC victory. Martinez finished 13th on the stage, enough to finish second overall.
Jay Vine (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) finished fourth on the stage to move onto the podium and finish third as Lorenzo Fortunato (XDS Astana), previously second, shipped a lot of time in the TT and slipped down the rankings.
Third on the day went to Alberto Bettiol (XDS Astana), who set an impressive time early on and was only beaten by the GC riders.
"Of course, I feel very happy. The goal was to win the race," Almeida said. Unfortunately, I didn't win a stage, but we were always in the front, and that's what matters. I'm super happy for the overall win. I need to thank the whole team; they did a really good job, and we can be proud of it.
"What counts is the last day, right? So I think it was the right day [to take the lead]. To be honest, I was struggling the whole week; I was never feeling 100 per cent, but I gave my best, and I never gave up. Sometimes it's all about your mindset."
Though only 17km in length, the final time trial made for some significant moves in the top 10, not just Almeida grabbing the win, but Evenepoel's win saw him climb up to fifth overall and cap off a mixed week with a victory after dropping back on the Queen stage on Saturday.
"It was quite a unique course, I'd say, with a technical start and then a long straight line towards the climb and then a long time on the power to come back, but I think I did an almost perfect time trial, the maximum I could do today, so I'm happy to come back with a victory today," Evenepoel said at the finish.
"I came here with quite normal ambitions, nothing crazy, I knew I was coming to this race with some up and down form, so I didn't have big ambitions. I was mainly focusing on today's stage."
How it unfolded
Stage 5's final time trial saw the riders take on a 17.1km course around Geneva, largely flat but with one steady rise in the second half.
Of the early starters, it was Danish TT specialist Johan Price-Pejtersen (Alpecin-Deceuninck) who recorded the initial fastest time, setting a benchmark time of 21:11, though with such strong time trialists amongst the top GC riders, that time was always expected to fall.
It was a surprising name that first knocked Price-Pejtersen off the hot seat when Thibault Guernalec (Arkéa-B&B Hotels) took four seconds off the Dane, but that time didn't last long either, as Alberto Bettiol (XDS Astana) soon knocked a big 15 seconds off the best time.
Bettiol's strong time stood for most of the afternoon, with only Aleksandr Vlasov (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe) coming close, but that changed when the GC riders started to finish.
After feeling slightly off the pace in the mountains, time trial world champion Evenepoel was back at his best on his TT bike, knocking 18 seconds off of Bettiol's time to grab the lead and set a time that no one else could touch.
With Evenepoel having the stage win in the bag, the final times were just about the GC, with Almeida clocking a time 11 seconds down on the Belgian but enough to take the overall victory from Martinez, who put in a strong effort in the discipline to hold onto second.
Martinez will also take home the best young rider's jersey, whilst Ben Zwiehoff (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe) wins the mountains classification, and the points jersey goes to Jay Vine.
Results
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