Tour de Romandie (st. 1)
Basque allrounder remains in yellow after shortened day two in Tour de Romandie thanks to fantastic Movistar Team, with the likes of Pedrero, Rojas, Herrada or Amador steering the peloton
Ion came to stay. The younger of the Izagirre brothers has kept the lead of the 2016 after his exhibition on Tuesday, with no fear against the main names of the peloton. As they've done already so many times during the early season, the telephone squad worked flawlessly -what the world's top-ranked team for the past three seasons is supposed to do- and retained the top spot overall ahead of the first mountains scheduled for tomorrow.
Due to snow and ice covering the roads early on today's route, the race organisers chose to shorten it to 100.5km from Mathod to Moudon, under sunny skies and on dry roads which still included some insidious ramps and three Cat-3 ascents. A solid Blue roster, formed by Andrey Amador, Winner Anacona, Jesús Herrada, Gorka Izagirre, Antonio Pedrero, Nairo Quintana, José Joaquín Rojas and Ion Izagirre, drove the pace through all of them. Antonio took care of the rhythm early to keep Brüngger (ROT) and Minnaard (WGG) under control -caught with 30km remaining-, before Amador and Rojas pushed through the final Côte de Vauderens (Cat-3, slopes peaking at 16%) to bring back solo leader Sander Armée (LTS) with less than 13km to go.
Marcel Kittel (EQS) narrowly beat Niccolò Bonifazio (TFS) at the mass sprint, with all eight Movistar Team members safe and happy to reach Moudon, prelude of tomorrow's Cat-1 Morgins finish, in perfect condition with Ion and certain to find a competitive Nairo Quintana on the first big mountain showdown.