Eglantine Rayer brilliant 5th after she impresses in Tour de Suisse breakaway

The final day of racing at the Tour de Suisse saw the peloton faced with a short but sharp 100 kilometre long route, starting and finishing in the town of Ebnat-Kappel, and one that included roughly 1500 metres of climbing throughout the stage. It was a fast start to the day with several attacks before Eglantine Rayer managed to break clear in a group of ten that quickly built up their lead over the peloton, reaching a maximum of around three minutes.

However, heading onto the longest climb of the day the pace in the peloton increased and as a result the front group split up, with Rayer riding well above her young age, going clear with Van De Velde. The duo worked well together but they were soon joined by a strong attacking duo of Niewiadoma and Fisher-Black at 45 kilometres to go, who had jumped out from the chasing peloton. The gap to the ever reducing chasing peloton held steady at around two minutes as they made it onto the penultimate climb, where Rayer’s group split and the duo that had bridged across pushed on. Rayer rode steady at her own tempo alongside Van De Velde and they were joined by a charger Reusser who had attacked from the peloton behind.

Crossing the line with one lap to go they were 50 seconds in arrears of the leading duo, but held onto a one minute advantage over the reduced bunch. As the yellow jersey, Reusser shouldered most of the work and kept the pace up, increasing it even further as they hit the climb for the last time. Rayer dug deep but had to let go of the wheel, riding at her own tempo over the top and eventually she was caught by the chasers behind.

Fighting all the way to the finish, Rayer dug deep and sprinted to a brilliant fifth place after being out front in the breakaway all day; her first WorldTour level top ten finish, let alone top five. With the race in pieces behind, Rayer also moved up in the overall classification to secure a great tenth place on GC too.

Speaking after the stage Rayer said: “We started without our GC finisher Juliette today but we had good cards to play, not for the GC, but for good results. Some girls took a few seconds ahead pretty quickly and we had no one there, so Francesca played her role as captain and told me I had to go now so I closed the gap and joined the girls in the front. At first I thought it would just be a ‘morning breakaway’ and that we were going to be taken back after a while. When the bunch started to come back to us we sped up the climb and some girls couldn’t keep up the pace so there were only two of us left from this first breakaway and we continued to keep the gap. Then the leaders accelerated in the bunch and everything exploded behind. They caught up with us one after the other and each time I hung on for as long as possible. I was up there fighting with some of the best girls in the world which was crazy, and chasing with the European TT champion definitely hurt, but I was having a great day, and I think I’m almost totally back from my winter issues. In the end I arrived fighting for fourth place and finished fifth behind Vollering. I am really happy with this result in my first stage race, it’s my first top five in the WorldTour, first top ten on GC; and I’m super proud of my team, because we still bring back a top ten on the GC in the end. The day was long because I did not expect to do the whole race at the front but with the motivation on the radio from Kelvin, all the belief in me from the team, and thinking of my teammates it helped me to push harder.”

Team DSM coach Kelvin Dekker added: “With Juliette out of the race, we wanted to give our young riders a good chance to go for a result, and test themselves in a bunch like this. We said if the breakaway was bigger then we had to be there. We almost missed it but Francesca told Eglantine to jump and she managed to make it. Eglantine did an incredible job. She did the right things at the right moment. She was really strong to begin with and you can see that from the time she took. We were fighting all day but took the right moments to wait, such as saving energy when Reusser was on the way. Then she had to really push on the last climb to get to the top before Vollering and Longo Borghini, then did well on a challenging descent. To get a top five as a first year elite rider and tenth on GC, it’s an incredible ride. I think it shows that as a team we have a group of strong young riders. We worked a lot with Eglantine over the winter and everyone in the team worked really hard to bring her to this point, so it’s a great achievement.”