Romain Bardet gets up for 4th in Tour de Romandie sprint after strong teamwork

After yesterday’s short opening prologue blast, the Tour de Romandie peloton were in action for the first open road stage of the race this afternoon. Faced with an intriguing route, the profile was dominated by a tricky climb in the middle of the day before another climb and a plateau of around 40 kilometres to the finish.

The team rode well as a unit after the breakaway had formed in the early stages but as the peloton approached the main climb the gap tumbled to those ahead as an infernal pace was set. Niklas Märkl and Marco Brenner stuck with sprint finisher Alberto Dainese and they tried their best as part of a group to come back to the head of the race after losing contact on the climb, but unfortunately the pace remained high and the elastic snapped. In the peloton the guys rallied around Romain Bardet, and worked well as a group coming into the technical finale as the race charged towards a reduced bunch sprint. With some good positioning work by Max Poole and Chris Hamilton, it was over to Oscar Onley who did a strong turn in the closing kilometre and brought Bardet into a place where he could sprint for a result. Showing the speed and explosiveness in his legs, Bardet kicked strongly and sprinted to a great fourth place; just a fraction of a wheel length behind the podium on the day.

Speaking after the stage Bardet said: “It was a really good first road stage with the boys, we really worked super well together. We split in two groups on the climb, as Niklas and Marco tried to bring Alberto back after a fast climb halfway through the race but unfortunately they couldn’t make it. In the finale we held a really good position allowing me to sprint for a nice result after a really good lead out by Oscar. It’s a really positive day and we’re looking forward to the next stages.”

Team DSM coach Phil West added: “It was a good day for us. We started the day with the goals of protecting Romain for GC and to go for the stage result with Alberto as our finisher. We knew that it would be a difficult stage but when he could get over the climbs in a good way then we believed he had a good chance. INEOS made a really difficult tempo to try and isolate the sprinters and they almost dropped all of them except one or two. We had Marco and Niklas together with Alberto but unfortunately they couldn’t come back. In the final we focused on positioning really well to take care of Romain in the tricky final. Through some good teamwork and positioning he was then able to give it a good go in the sprint and came away with a nice result for us. It’s a good start for the first road stage and we’ll look to continue that tomorrow.”