Tour de Suisse: Ayuso solos to victory on mountainous stage 5

Juan Ayuso (UAE Team Emirates) stole a march on all of his GC rivals on stage 5 of the Tour de Suisse, as he attacked the group of favourites on the final climb of the Albula Pass, before catching and passing the remnants of the breakaway to reach the summit alone. The young Spanish supertalent then pushed the envelope on the descent to maintain his gap over the chasing group behind, soloing to an incredible victory in La Punt and moving up to third place in the overall standings.

It was a difficult start to the day for the riders, with the first climb of the Furka Pass coming just 22km into the stage. It was on that climb that the early breakaway formed, as a whopping 36 riders went clear at the head of the race. However, this number was eventually whittled down to 19 riders by the top of the climb, where Sergio Higuita (Bora-Hansgrohe) took maximum points ahead of Pascal Eenkhoorn (Lotto-Dstny) and Wout van Aert (Jumbo-Visma).

After the descent off the Furka Pass, the riders were immediately onto the Oberalp Pass, where it was roles reversed at the summit, as Eenkhoorn beat Higuita to the summit to take maximum points, with Van Aert coming across the line in third to sweep up the remaining points once again.

With the front group now established at the head of the race, it stayed together until around 43km to go, where Quinn Simmons (Trek-Segafredo) put in a small attack to whittle the group down further to 13 riders.

It was on the final climb of the Albula Pass where the decisive attacks were made though, as with around 22km to go Neilson Powless (EF Education-EasyPost) made a move off the front of the group, taking Antonio Tiberi (Bahrain Victorious), Rui Costa (Intermarché-Circus-Wanty) and Oier Lazkano (Movistar Team) with him. However, Lazkano was quickly dropped, having already expended a bit of energy on the earlier slopes, leaving a trio of Powless, Costa and Tiberi at the front of affairs.

In the group of favourites behind, Wout van Aert had dropped back to support his team leader Wilco Kelderman (Jumbo-Visma) after an attack from the overall leader, Felix Gall (AG2R Citroën Team), which created gaps between the favourites on the road.

However, the decisive move would come with 14km to go, as Ayuso attacked the group of favourites and began to chase down the breakaway. A lifting of the pace at the front dropped Powless, which meant that by the time that Ayuso bridged across to the front group it was just Tiberi and Costa who remained.

Ayuso wasted no time in dropping the pair and the Spanish rider continued to ride on to the summit at an infernal pace. When he reached the top of the climb, it was just a matter of negotiating the descent before pushing onto the finish, where he took the biggest win of his career so far.

As he crossed the line, Ayuso pointed to his foot that had been causing so many issues in the early part of the season, sending a message to the entire peloton that his injuries were behind him and that he was back to his best.

The Spaniard’s win took him up to third place in the overall standings, just 18 seconds behind Mattias Skjelmose (Trek-Segafredo), who finished in second place on the stage to take six bonus seconds, which was enough to recover the overall lead of the race from Felix Gall, having lost the leader’s jersey to the Austrian rider on yesterday’s stage.

It was after the race that we learned about a horrific crash involving Magnus Sheffield (Ineos Grenadiers) and Gino Mäder (Bahrain Victorious), who had both fallen on the final descent and had abandoned the race. The American rider had reportedly gone over his handlebars on the descent and had crashed head first, in what sounded like a horrible accident.