Simon Spilak (Team Katusha) used his time trial skills and his fighting spirit to snatch overall victory in the Tour de Suisse and add the UCI WorldTour stage race to his growing palmares. 

The determined 28 year-old Slovenian rider produced one of the best performances of his career to finish second in the final time trial stage around Bern to secure overall victory. He was 18 seconds slower than time trial expert and stage winner Tom Dumoulin (Team Giant-Alpecin) but his consistency during the other stages and especially the key mountain stage to Sölden, left him within shot of overall victory. With a strong ride he gained enough time to move past Thibaut Pinot (FDJ) and Geraint Thomas (Team Sky) to the final leader’s yellow jersey of the race. The time differences were in single figures but Spilak was crowned the winner, five seconds ahead of Thomas and 19 seconds better than Dumoulin. 

It was Spilak’s tenth victory of his professional career and he excels in hilly stage races, especially in Switzerland. He won the 2010 Tour de Romandie and finished second overall in this year’s race. 

“I’m really, really happy and want to thank my teammates who helped me so much during the race,” he said. “This is the biggest win of my career so far. The time trial was really hard but I liked it. It was up and down all the way and that helped me. I gave it everything.”
 

Thanks to his victory, Spilak rose from sixteenth to fifth in the individual UCI WorldTour rankings and helped his Russian Katusha team move to the top of the UCI WorldTour team ranking. 

Spilak now has a total of 269 points after scoring 100 points for overall victory. Spain’s Alejandro Valverde (Movistar Team) is still the leader of the individual rankings after his successful spring and early summer racing campaign. He has a total of 350 points. 

Giro d’Italia winner Alberto Contador (Tinkoff-Saxo) remains in second place with 307 points, with Richie Porte (Team Sky) third with 304 points. Spilak slots in behind former UCI World Champion Rui Costa (Lampre-Merida) who has 274 points. Thomas also climbed the individual rankings from twelfth to sixth. He has 267 points.

The Katusha team has a new total of 980 points and moved past Team Sky to take the top spot in the team ranking. Team Sky is second and has 955, while Etixx-QuickStep is third with 861 points.

Spain continues to dominate the nations ranking with 1138 points.

The Tour de Suisse was the final UCI WorldTour race in June and the last test of fitness and team strength before theTour de France. Cycling’s biggest race of the season starts on July 4 and ends three weeks later in Paris on July 26.