Meyer Wins Stage 1 of Tour de Suisse 2013

News & Results

06/8/2013| 0 comments
by Mark Watson

Meyer Wins Stage 1 of Tour de Suisse 2013

Team GreenEdge's Cameron Meyer earlier today powered to victory in the stage 1 individual time trial of the 2013 Tour de Suisse - a stage he's been targeting for months. The Australian beat Omega Pharma-QuickStep's Niki Terpstra and IAM Cycling's Heinrich Haussler, who delivered a surprisingly strong performance on the roads of Switzerland.

Ten seconds quicker than Terpstra, Meyer covered the 8.1 kilometer individual time trial course in 9’40. Meyer will wear yellow during the first road stage tomorrow.

“Today went really well,” Meyer commented after being celebrated on the podium. “I’m excited and a bit surprised with the result. I started off with the earlier group of riders, and the wind was definitely in my favor. Still, my legs were good.”

After Meyer had completed his ride, the wind began to pick up on the time trial course and caused problems for many of the favorites who were expected to fight for the stage victory. While the weather may have worked to Meyer’s advantage, his GreenEdge team says it had studied the forecast and deliberating started him earlier in the day.

“Any day there is a first stage time trial, the team can choose in which order it wants to race its riders,” explained Sport Director Laurenzo Lapage. “We knew there was a big chance of rain in the afternoon, so we purposefully put Cam (Cameron Meyer) early."

Although the rain didn’t fall until after the final finisher, the winds picked up and shifted for the second half of the start list, in which the race favorites were located.

“Most teams put their GC guys in the last wave as a general rule,” said Lapage. “We did something different today and it paid dividends. It was a little bit of luck and some good planning combined with a super, super ride.”

Meyer has long talked up the Tour de Suisse as a major objective for his season. He finished in the top ten overall at Tour of Turkey in late April and repeated the feat at the Amgen Tour of California in May.

“Cam has targeted this a long way out,” Lapage explained. “He’s progressed very well since his saddle sore surgery at the beginning of the year. The course suits his characteristics with another time trial mixed amongst the hilly stages. We’re expecting a big ride from him.”

“I’m very happy with my ride,” Meyer added and continued “To be leading a WorldTour race with a lot of riders getting ready for the Tour de France is better than I could have dreamt.”

“I’m looking forward to tomorrow,” Meyer said. “It will be hard with the final up to Crans Montana, but we have a good team. I’m confident we can represent the jersey well.”

Tomorrow's stage two is a challenging 170 kilometer ride, which sends the peloton across the famous hors-categorie Nufenenpass before climbing to the finish line at the top of the Crans-Montana - the place where Laurent Fignon secured his legendary 1984 Tour de France victory.

Tour of Switzerland race leader Cameron Meyer is using the premium version of the RoadCycling.com TrainingPeaks Training Tracker service to track and plan his training and nutrition. Want the same advantage as Meyer and the rest of Team GreenEdge? Sign up for the premium version here. After signing up you can easily login to your Training Tracker account from all pages here on RoadCycling.com to access all the great Training Tracker features.

Your comments
Your comments
sign up or login to post a comment