Luke Plapp may have been expected to start flexing his muscles on the overall at the Tour de Romandie in Friday's stage 3 time trial, but he decided not to wait. The Australian Jayco-AlUla rider grasped an opportunity to jump over to the break on Thursday's stage 2 finishing climb, carving out an advantage over key general classification rivals the day before the race against the clock, which had been earmarked pre-race as the stage he would be targeting.
Plapp's third place finish on the 171km stage – behind Thibau Nys (Lidl-Trek) and Andrea Vendrame (Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale) – also put him in third place overall.
“It was a bit of an interesting day to be honest, with the break, nobody knew which team was going to ride, there was a bit of a standoff,” said Plapp in a team media statement. “Then it was quite controlled and that last climb, I surprised myself to be honest. I didn’t expect that.”
Plapp may not have planned the stage 2 attack, which came at a little over 2km to go, but once the chance arose he capitalised on it. The 23-year-old rode away with Florian Lipowitz (Bora Hansgrohe), initially on his wheel but he was alone by the time he had bridged to the remainder of the break.
“Simon [Yates] did an amazing attack into the final that sort of softened everybody up, so I just tried to take my opportunity,” said Plapp of the one-two-punch delivered by the team on the hilltop finish to Les Marécottes.
The opening technical 2.3km prologue had pulled out some early time gaps among the overall contenders, and with Plapp at 17 seconds back from the winner of the stage he had been a little in arrears of some of his key rivals given riders like Juan Ayuso (UAE Team Emirates) managed to hold the gap to around seven seconds. That, however, changed on Thursday when Plapp crossed the line 12 seconds ahead of the group of chasing favourites and claimed a four-second time bonus as well when he finished on the podium behind Nys and Vendrame.
The two riders who beat Plapp on stage 2 are now the only ones ahead of him on the overall ranking, though they seem unlikely to remain there through stage 3's race against the clock. Ilan van Wilder (Soudal-QuickStep) is behind Plapp in fourth on the general classification – three seconds back from the Australian road race and time trial champion – while Enric Mas (Movistar), Lenny Martinez (Groupama-FDJ), Ayuso and Aleksandr Vlasov (Bora-Hansgrohe) are all within six seconds of the Jayco-AlUla rider.
Friday’s 15.5km time trial in Oron is likely to deliver another big reshuffle, one that could even give Plapp – who rode in yellow at Paris-Nice for three days last month before finishing sixth – a chance to give another leader's jersey a test run.
“I am happy with my shape, and we will see how tomorrow goes,” said Plapp. “TT is my favourite event in the world, I can’t wait, it is going to be a fun day for me.”
