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2012 Tour de Romandie
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2012 Tour de Romandie
The 2012 Tour de Romandie was the 66th running of the Tour de Romandie cycling stage race. It started on 24 April in Lausanne and ended on 29 April in Crans-Montana and consisted of six stages, including a race-commencing prologue stage and a race-concluding individual time trial. It was the 14th race of the 2012 UCI World Tour season.
The race was won by Great Britain's Bradley Wiggins of Team Sky, after winning two stages including the final stage time trial, to take the general classification on the final day. Wiggins won the general classification by 12 seconds over runner-up Andrew Talansky of Garmin–Barracuda, who finished second to Wiggins in the final stage; Talansky also won the young rider classification title. Third place was taken by Movistar Team's Rui Costa after he also put in a strong performance in the time trial, and gained sufficient time to move up from ninth overnight.
In the race's other classifications, Petr Ignatenko of Team Katusha won both the green jersey for the most points gained in intermediate sprints, and the pink jersey for the King of the Mountains classification, while Team Sky finished at the head of the teams classification, with three of the squad's riders – Wiggins, Richie Porte and Michael Rogers – finishing in the overall top five.
As the Tour de Romandie was a UCI World Tour event, all 18 UCI ProTeams were invited automatically and obligated to send a squad. Two other squads were given wildcard places into the race, and as such, formed the event's 20-team peloton.
The 20 teams that competed in the race were:
The race began once again with a short prologue stage held in and around Lausanne; the stage returning to the city after the race visited Martigny for the prologue in the 2011 edition of the race. The stage itself, 3.34 km (2.1 mi) in length, was relatively flat, dropping only 39 metres (128 ft) in altitude from the start, to the end. With rain expected to disrupt the stage, teams decided to spread their time trial specialists across the field in order to maximise their potential of winning the stage. For the first rider to depart the start in Lausanne, Saur–Sojasun's Maxime Méderel, weather conditions were dry. Mederel ultimately recorded a time of 3' 51" for the stage, but his time only held for a minute as Team Europcar's Franck Bouyer completed the course 2.1 seconds quicker. Ramūnas Navardauskas (Garmin–Barracuda) improved upon Bouyer's time by almost ten seconds, recording a time one-hundredth inside 3' 40".
Navardauskas' time was marginally quicker than the times of Rabobank's Maarten Wynants and his own Garmin–Barracuda team-mate David Zabriskie, with the trio of riders maintaining their lead positions until the end of the second wave of riders, when Martin Velits assumed the lead for Omega Pharma–Quick-Step. Velits completed the course four tenths of a second faster than what Navardauskas had achieved; but he was to only hold the lead for around quarter of an hour, as in the third wave of riders to start the prologue, Stef Clement took the lead for Rabobank; the former Dutch national champion in the discipline completed the course in slightly over 3' 37". Clement's time held for a while, as riders struggled to match the pace that he had set; it was not until Giacomo Nizzolo, a rider regarded as a sprinter at the RadioShack–Nissan team, recorded a time of 3' 34". Only one rider bettered his time for the course, and it was the rider that started immediately after him; Geraint Thomas (Team Sky) set the fastest time of 3' 29", taking his team's fourteenth victory of the year, and his first since returning to the roads after a successful UCI Track World Championships, where he claimed a gold medal and a silver medal. Although he won the stage, Thomas' focus for the race was to support Mark Cavendish and Bradley Wiggins in their respective classifications.
After these two placings had been wrapped up, further riders from Team Sky, Omega Pharma–Quick-Step and Rabobank looked to place themselves among the top ten riders for the stage. Kristof Vandewalle was third for a time, recording a 3' 35" for the parcours, before his time was bettered by Michael Rogers and then Cavendish, who set his time just as the weather conditions changed; rain began to become a factor in the stage proceedings from then on. With these conditions, it guaranteed most of the top ten placings for the early runners but Manuele Boaro recorded the best time of those that went out later in the start order; eventually setting the ninth-fastest time for the stage, with Alex Rasmussen rounding out the top ten for Garmin–Barracuda. Overall contenders Tejay van Garderen (BMC Racing Team), Jérôme Coppel (Saur–Sojasun), as well as Wiggins and van Garderen's team-mate Cadel Evans all finished outside the top ten after starting in the worst of the conditions; Wiggins placed best in eleventh, having again encountered wet conditions as he had done in the opening stage of March's Paris–Nice race.
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2012 Tour de Romandie
The 2012 Tour de Romandie was the 66th running of the Tour de Romandie cycling stage race. It started on 24 April in Lausanne and ended on 29 April in Crans-Montana and consisted of six stages, including a race-commencing prologue stage and a race-concluding individual time trial. It was the 14th race of the 2012 UCI World Tour season.
The race was won by Great Britain's Bradley Wiggins of Team Sky, after winning two stages including the final stage time trial, to take the general classification on the final day. Wiggins won the general classification by 12 seconds over runner-up Andrew Talansky of Garmin–Barracuda, who finished second to Wiggins in the final stage; Talansky also won the young rider classification title. Third place was taken by Movistar Team's Rui Costa after he also put in a strong performance in the time trial, and gained sufficient time to move up from ninth overnight.
In the race's other classifications, Petr Ignatenko of Team Katusha won both the green jersey for the most points gained in intermediate sprints, and the pink jersey for the King of the Mountains classification, while Team Sky finished at the head of the teams classification, with three of the squad's riders – Wiggins, Richie Porte and Michael Rogers – finishing in the overall top five.
As the Tour de Romandie was a UCI World Tour event, all 18 UCI ProTeams were invited automatically and obligated to send a squad. Two other squads were given wildcard places into the race, and as such, formed the event's 20-team peloton.
The 20 teams that competed in the race were:
The race began once again with a short prologue stage held in and around Lausanne; the stage returning to the city after the race visited Martigny for the prologue in the 2011 edition of the race. The stage itself, 3.34 km (2.1 mi) in length, was relatively flat, dropping only 39 metres (128 ft) in altitude from the start, to the end. With rain expected to disrupt the stage, teams decided to spread their time trial specialists across the field in order to maximise their potential of winning the stage. For the first rider to depart the start in Lausanne, Saur–Sojasun's Maxime Méderel, weather conditions were dry. Mederel ultimately recorded a time of 3' 51" for the stage, but his time only held for a minute as Team Europcar's Franck Bouyer completed the course 2.1 seconds quicker. Ramūnas Navardauskas (Garmin–Barracuda) improved upon Bouyer's time by almost ten seconds, recording a time one-hundredth inside 3' 40".
Navardauskas' time was marginally quicker than the times of Rabobank's Maarten Wynants and his own Garmin–Barracuda team-mate David Zabriskie, with the trio of riders maintaining their lead positions until the end of the second wave of riders, when Martin Velits assumed the lead for Omega Pharma–Quick-Step. Velits completed the course four tenths of a second faster than what Navardauskas had achieved; but he was to only hold the lead for around quarter of an hour, as in the third wave of riders to start the prologue, Stef Clement took the lead for Rabobank; the former Dutch national champion in the discipline completed the course in slightly over 3' 37". Clement's time held for a while, as riders struggled to match the pace that he had set; it was not until Giacomo Nizzolo, a rider regarded as a sprinter at the RadioShack–Nissan team, recorded a time of 3' 34". Only one rider bettered his time for the course, and it was the rider that started immediately after him; Geraint Thomas (Team Sky) set the fastest time of 3' 29", taking his team's fourteenth victory of the year, and his first since returning to the roads after a successful UCI Track World Championships, where he claimed a gold medal and a silver medal. Although he won the stage, Thomas' focus for the race was to support Mark Cavendish and Bradley Wiggins in their respective classifications.
After these two placings had been wrapped up, further riders from Team Sky, Omega Pharma–Quick-Step and Rabobank looked to place themselves among the top ten riders for the stage. Kristof Vandewalle was third for a time, recording a 3' 35" for the parcours, before his time was bettered by Michael Rogers and then Cavendish, who set his time just as the weather conditions changed; rain began to become a factor in the stage proceedings from then on. With these conditions, it guaranteed most of the top ten placings for the early runners but Manuele Boaro recorded the best time of those that went out later in the start order; eventually setting the ninth-fastest time for the stage, with Alex Rasmussen rounding out the top ten for Garmin–Barracuda. Overall contenders Tejay van Garderen (BMC Racing Team), Jérôme Coppel (Saur–Sojasun), as well as Wiggins and van Garderen's team-mate Cadel Evans all finished outside the top ten after starting in the worst of the conditions; Wiggins placed best in eleventh, having again encountered wet conditions as he had done in the opening stage of March's Paris–Nice race.
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