Tour de Romandie 2014 - Stage 2

Warmer weather greeted the peloton on the second road stage, and third stage overall, of the 2014 Tour de Romandie. Stage one had had to be shortened down to just 88 kilometres after snow had hit the Simplon Pass, causing the removal of the climb and the shortening of the race. Stage two was 166.5 kilometres long from Sion to Montreaux.

The breakaway of the day consisted of just two men, Pirmin Lang of IAM Cycling and Martin Kohler of BMC Racing, both men are flying their home flag in Romandie this week. They swept up a heap of bonus points between them, and despite the work of Omega Pharma-Quickstep, the team of race leader Michal Kwiatkowski, their lead held solid for the majority of the day.

With thirty kilometres to go, their lead was still over two minutes, which started to panic the peloton, who now upped their pace in accord. Lampre-Merida, Orica-GreenEDGE and Tinkoff-Saxo all started to help as the race reached the shores of Lake Geneva, but with fifteen kilometres to go the gap was still a minute and a half.

It took until the three kilometres to go point for the fighting duo to be reeled in by the peloton, the duo must have thought they were going to be fighting it out for the stage win right up until they were caught. The run in was incredibly technical, so a lead out was a must if you wanted to win the stage. Omega Pharma-Quickstep worked hard for their man Michal Kwiatkowski who opened up the sprint first.

Although Kwiatkowski's sprint was strong, he was overtaken on the run in by Orica-GreenEDGE's Michael Albasini, the winner of stage one. Albasini is now the leader of the race, with Kwiatkowski trailing by five seconds. The race has a few stages left for Chris Froome to show his form ahead of July's Tour de France, as he is under pressure from Alberto Contador to show some results.