Tour Of Britain Stage 6 – Matthias Brändle «Like a time trial»

IAM Cycling has not gone unnoticed along the streets of the Britain.  Each day, the riders of the Swiss Pro Continental team has done a great job of showing their jerseys.  Following his victory in Exeter yesterday, Matthias Brändle has once again tried his luck in stage six of the Tour of Britain and succeeded with a long breakaway, which this time had an advantage of nearly ten minutes at one point.

At last, the Omega Pharma-Quickstep, which held the yellow jersey on the shoulders of Michal Kwiatowski, and the BMC teams began to chase in earnest the breakaway that contained Alex Dowsett and Thomas Stewart along with Brändle, who is the Austrian time trial champion.  However, the peloton’s best efforts were not enough to haul in the trio, which allowed the three men the chance to sprint for the stage win.

Brändle powered to his second consecutive stage victory, and the time he gained on the stage moved him up into 10^th place overall.

Alex Dowsett meanwhile took over the leader’s jersey from Kwiatowski.  When the pack sprinted in 1’51” behind the leading three, IAM Cycling’s Heinrich Haussler came away with a strong 8^th place on the stage.

As soon as he crossed the line, Matthias Brändle was ready to comment on his dream day.

“I never imagined this scenario.  We took our chance and took time little by little.  When I heard that we had almost ten minutes advantage, I could not believe my ears.  And then the peloton was never able to catch up.  With Dowsett, we really rode like a time trial those last forty kilometers.  I’m really so happy to get this win just 24 hours after what was the most important win of my career.”

Kjell Carlström, the directeur sportif for IAM Cycling along with Eddy Seigneur, appreciated, once again, the combativeness that Brändle showed, as well as the solidarity of his riders.

“A break happened very quickly and Matthias followed Dowsett.  Omega Pharma-Quickstep did not want to ride on the front until the gap became more than nine minutes and they couldn’t close it down.   Nothing is certain for the rest of the race since Saturday’s stage has two climbs with very sharp percentages in the last ten kilometers.  But for the moment we will just savor this victory.”