Ethan Vernon (Soudal-QuickStep) delivered a powerful sprint to claim victory from a reduced peloton on stage 1 of the Tour de Romandie in Vallée de Joux. The 10-second bonus for stage victory saw the Briton inherit the yellow jersey of race leader from teammate Josef Cerny.
Teed up by this teammate Casper Pedersen, Vernon looked a likely winner from the moment he hit the front in the finishing straight, and he duly picked up his fourth win of the season.
Thibau Nys (Trek-Segafredo) took second ahead of Milan Menten (Lotto-Dstny), while Romain Bardet (DSM) showed a fine turn of speed to come through for fourth place ahead of Jacopo Mosca (Trek-Segafredo).
“It’s nice, it’s my second WorldTour win after Catalunya last year,” said Vernon. “I had a few wins already this year, but not in the WorldTour, so to win again at this level was nice.”
The tenor of the stage changed when Ineos Grenadiers forced the pace on the climb of Fontanezier shortly after midway, distancing most of the pure sprinters. Vernon was among the few fastman to withstand their forcing, and he showed sound instincts in the finale, where he realised that the tailwind lent itself to opening the sprint from distance.
The second-placed Nys confessed afterwards that he simply could not close the gap to the Soudal-QuickStep man once he had built up a head of steam. “When it’s a full tailwind and slightly downhill like this, once you’re up to speed, it’s hard to catch up to someone,” Nys said.
Vernon had started 2023 with victory at the Trofeo Palma and a brace of stage wins at the Tour of Rwanda, but the 22-year-old’s spring campaign was later restricted by illness.
“I had three wins at the start of the year, but then I had a bit of sickness, so to come back to good fitness and form is nice,” said Vernon, who is on the same time in the overall standings as his teammate Cerny and one second ahead of Tobias Foss (Jumbo-Visma).
Indeed, Foss made a surprisingly determined effort to win the day’s second intermediate sprint at Le Pont, and he later confessed that he had done so in the mistaken belief that there were bonus seconds on offer.
“We heard there were bonus seconds, so we saw an opportunity,” said Foss, who was informed by Casper Pedersen that his effort had been in vain. “It probably looked quite stupid, but in the end it’s not a big deal. It was an honest mistake. At least we went for it, and I’d say that’s better than sitting on our ass.”
How it unfolded
When Tobias Bayer (Alpecin-Deceuninck), Julien Bernard (Trek-Segafredo), Michael Schär (AG2R Citroën), Dario Lillo (Switzerland) and Jan Stöckli (Switzerland) forged clear in the opening kilometres of the 170.9km stage, they might have expected to spend the bulk of the day in front, but the speed of the peloton meant that their adventure would be shorter than anticipated.
Bernard led over the climb of Fontanezier, but Ineos had already started to up the ante there, and they continued on the ascent of Maurborget immediately afterwards.
Those efforts doomed the break and they also burnt off most of the established sprinters in the peloton, with Mark Cavendish (Astana-Qazaqstan), Fernando Gaviria (Movistar) and Giacomo Nizzolo (Israel-Premier Tech) among those distanced irretrievably on the two-part climb.
Cavendish would later abandon the race with 60km to go, at the same time as Rui Costa (Intermarché-Wanty-Gobert), who had sustained a knee injury on the start ramp of the prologue on Tuesday.
Simon Yates (Jayco-AlUla) had abandoned earlier in the stage, with his team later explaining that he had been beset by stomach problems.
After Ineos’ show of force, EF Education-EasyPost were also to the fore in propelling the reduced peloton, and by the time they crossed the finish line for the first time with 28km to go, it was already clear that a group finish was the most likely outcome.
The drama instead came at the rear of the race, where the gruppetto of sprinters briefly took a wrong turning on the finishing circuit. Out in front, meanwhile, Foss went on his futile hunt for bonus seconds, while Remi Cavagna also threatened to slip clear in the closing kilometres.
The yellow jersey Cerny later led into the final 2km for Soudal-QuickStep, while Casper Pedersen served as last man for Vernon, guiding the Briton into position for the inevitable sprint.
“Tomorrow is hard, so I’m not sure if I can keep the jersey,” Vernon said. “But anything is possible. I had good legs today, so we’ll see what the legs are like tomorrow. If not me, then we’ll try for someone else from the team.”
Results
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