Tour de Suisse stage 1: Yves Lampaert powers to time trial win and first race lead

Yves Lampaert (Soudal Quick-Step) powered to victory in the stage 1 time trial on the opening day of the Tour de Suisse, winning the prologue-length opener by a three-second margin.

He completed the 4.8km course in Vaduz, Liechtenstein in 5:05 to claim the first yellow leader's jersey of the race, repeating a feat he pulled off on stage 1 of the Tour de France in 2022.

Swiss rider Stefan Bissegger (EF Education-EasyPost) claimed second in a time of 5:08, whilst Ethan Hayter (Ineos Grenadiers) slotted into third, half a second back on Bissegger.

“I didn’t expect to beat the Swiss specialists Bissegger and [Stefan] Küng. I’m really proud that I could do it. I know this distance suits me well and I’m really happy and proud,” Lampaert said once his win had been confirmed.

This is in fact Lampaert’s first win at WorldTour level since that victory at the Tour two years ago, and clearly a special moment for the Belgian.

“Nowadays the level is so high in cycling and at one moment I started to doubt myself, but I never gave up the belief and I kept training as good as possible, so it really gives me a lot of satisfying feeling that I could take the victory today.”

With bad weather forecast, many of the favourites for the stage went down the ramp early in the day, trying to avoid any wet roads or rain and find the best conditions on the not-particularly-technical course.

It was GC hopeful João Almeida (UAE Team Emirates) who set the early fastest time, setting the benchmark of 5:12. Home star Stefan Küng (Groupama-FDJ) set off just after the Portuguese rider, atop his new Wilier TT bike, but couldn’t quite take advantage of his home advantage, and finished two seconds down on Almeida and missed a chance to go into the hot seat.

Read more: Wilier releases brand new Supersonica SLR TT bike designed in collaboration with Stefan Küng

Almeida didn’t lead for too long and was soon knocked off the top of the standings by Lampaert, who took a massive seven seconds out of the best time to go into the lead, and with such a margin and the conditions worsening after his ride, his time would prove impossible to beat.

After Küng’s probably disappointing ride, Bissegger redeemed the Swiss time triallists by finishing second, whilst Ethan Hayter’s time held up to give him third, despite going later as Ineos Grenadiers prioritised their early slots for Egan Bernal and Tom Pidcock.

What it means for the GC

With plenty of very hard stages to come and a final, climbing TT on stage 8, stage 1’s results likely won’t be too decisive in the overall classification. That said, despite the short length, some gaps have already opened up, and there are definitely some winners and losers after stage 1.

UAE Team Emirates’ co-leaders Almeida and Finn Fisher-Black were the biggest beneficiaries, finishing fourth and fifth with the same time and taking around four seconds on the next GC riders, Wilco Kelderman (Visma-Lease a Bike) and Mattias Skjelmose (Lidl-Trek).

UAE’s third rider Adam Yates shed a little more time, 15 seconds down on the winner, but was still one of the highest-placed overall hopefuls. The likes of Tom Pidcock, Egan Bernal, Stevie Williams (Israel-Premier Tech) and Maxim Van Gils (Lotto Dstny) all finished around the same time as each other, with even the riders further down the rankings only shipping one or two seconds on such a short course.

The only possible overall contenders who did lose a noticeable amount of time were Isaac del Toro (UAE Team Emirates, +0:49), Emanuel Buchmann (Bora-Hansgrohe, +0:32) and Einer Rubio (Movistar, +0:28) but otherwise the gaps remain minimal heading into a likely sprint day on stage 2.