A fast pace in the last hour of racing set up a group sprint with Daniel Moreno still keeping it close in his bid to stay on the podium in the 2015 Tour de Suisse. The Spanish rider finished sixth on stage 4 behind winner Michael Matthews and holds third place on the classification after race leader Tom Dumoulin (Giant-Alpecin).
"It was a little bit of a strange stage today. It was not for the sprinters like Alexander Kristoff because in the circuits there were a lot of climbs and it wasn’t for the climbers because the climbs were not too hard for them especially in the finish. So for us the main thing was to keep our GC guys Moreno and Špilak out of trouble and we did it that. In the final the team tried to do something in the uphill finish and it was good teamwork. Dani was 6th. Now all our thinking turns to tomorrow’s hard stage," said team director Torsten Schmidt.
Matthews (Orica-GreenEdge) was joined on the stage podium by Peter Sagan (Tinkoff-Saxo) and BMC’s Greg Van Avermaet, all on the same time of 4:36.00. Due to time bonuses on the finish line, Sagan moved into second place on the classification ahead of Daniel Moreno. Sagan is 1-second behind yellow jersey Dumoulin and Moreno, in third place, is 9-seconds off the top time.
Stage 4 began in Flims Laax Falera and ended in Schwarzenbach SG after 193 km. A break of five riders was caught with 50 km to go by the motivated pace set from Matthews’ Orica-GreenEdge team. Despite late attacks by Alexey Lutsenko (Astana) as well as Marco Marcato (Wanty) and Jan Bakelants (AG2R), the group sprint was set in motion in the closing kilometers. A crash in the last kilometer disrupted and delayed some riders, but Matthews was fast on the wheel when Sagan launched early and took the victory.
Wednesday’s stage 5 brings the high mountains for a difficult and testing day. At 237 km, the stage is the longest in the 9-day race. It begins in Unterterzen/Flumserberg and ends in Sölden, Austria atop the 12 km climb to the finish.
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