BMC Racing’s Richie Porte has just extended his Tour de Suisse lead beating several of his Tour de France rivals including Movistar’s Nairo Quintana.
Porte, was able to extend his GC lead 32 seconds over Sunweb’s Kelderman and Omen with an impressive attack during the final, harder climb of yesterday’s sixth stage.
Porte is now almost touching his dream and win his first stage tour of the year before hoping to Tour de France which starts only a couple of week later.
“It’s nice to take a little bit more time. Guys like Kelderman and Oomen are good time triallists, so it’s good to put a bit more time into them,” Porte said during an official press conference.
Tough climbs
The 7th stage of the #tourdesuisse runs over 170.5k from Eschenbach / Atzmänning to Arosa. Start: 11h50
More information: https://t.co/VFTQsdtJx4 pic.twitter.com/hebdSGzz4g— Tour de Suisse (@tds) June 15, 2018
Today’s stage will feature the same famous climbs which have been used tens times before as stage finishers at the Tour de Suisse and Richie Porte is well aware of the challenges this stage brings which, with the smallest mistake, may set him a bit too far from the big title.
“We can’t be complacent yet. We still have a hard stage tomorrow. The time trial isn’t the best time trial for me but we’ll take it day-by-day. I think we can enjoy today though because the team were incredible.
Tomorrow isn’t going to be an easy stage. There are a lot of tired legs out there and after today some of our guys will be tired tomorrow. Saturday should be a sprint stage so tomorrow, for our guys, will be the last proper time to put the work in, in order to defend,” he added.
#TourdeSuisse Re-live @richie_porte‘s impressive late attack on stage 6. Six stages down, three to go! #Ride_BMC pic.twitter.com/kN6mNpJa2U
— BMC Racing Team (@BMCProTeam) June 14, 2018