"Not harder than I thought, but I'm alive, that's most important. On to bigger and better things in Switzerland."

Those were the words of Astana's Alexey Lutsenko after the one-day circuit race on the German-Swiss border in Gippingen. Lutsenko attacked twice during the hilly circuit race to try and bring back a dangerous breakaway and succeeded in the final lap to finish in the same group as race winner Alexander Kristoff from Norway.

Lutsenko did his first race in the peloton since the spring and emergency surgery removed him from the active calendar. With teammates and team leader Jakob Fuglsang, Lutsenko moves on to the Tour de Suisse beginning Saturday over nine stages, including bookend medium-distance individual time trials and a monster 257km mountain stage in the middle.