A strong four-man breakaway animated the 164.6-kilometer stage seven at the Tour de Suisse.  The quartet were only caught in the final 1.5 kilometers resulting in a sprint finish for the second straight day, and Alexander Kristoff (Katusha) edged out Peter Sagan (Tinkoff-Saxo) for the win.

Bob Jungels finished safely in 36th place to maintain his 15th place in the overall classification and keep alive the team’s goal of a top 10 finish. Missing from the action in the finale was Jasper Stuyven’s fast legs, as the Belgian is suffering from plaguing back pain.

The team goal was to be in the day’s escape, but the men who broke clear were testament to the difficulty of the race’s early going with Michal Kwiatkowski (Etixx-QuickStep), Silvan Dillier (BMC), Daryl Impey (Orica-GreenEDGE) and Axel Domont (Ag2r) making a formidable foursome.

Director Kim Andersen explained:

“It was a breakaway of high level riders and we would have liked to be in the breakaway today, but after a half an hour of aggressive riding where we tried a lot, the strong guys went and we had no one because it’s more or less the legs that spoke at that point. It was a really, really fast start and ended to be a hard, hard race because we had more than 45km/h average for 165 kilometers of up and downs. So then you saw strong guys at the front.

“The guys who tried were the ones for us that could: Rasty, Stijn, Julian and Laurent.  We already knew this morning that Jasper had problems with the back and that he was not in top condition for today. Fabian is not in top condition for a stage like today, and it’s not a finish for Fränk. Bob, of course, is riding for GC, so it was up to these four guys for us. Tomorrow is another day - we try again.

“We still have the goal to bring Bob into the top GC by the end of this race – that was one of our goals coming in, to have 1 or 2 riders in the top 10 – and I think that Bob can still do it.”