Egan holds firm to retain Suisse lead

22 Jun 2019

Egan holds firm to retain Suisse lead

Related riders

Tour de Suisse – Stage 8 – Goms (ITT), 19.2km

Egan Bernal held firm to retain his overall race lead at the Tour de Suisse following an impressive time trial performance.
 
The young Colombian put in a very competitive time to fend off the challenge of world time trial champion Rohan Dennis (Bahrain Merida), and now takes a 22-second lead into the final day.
 
11th fastest on the stage and only losing just under half of his overnight advantage across the flat 19.2-kilometre test, Bernal takes the yellow jersey into Sunday’s mountain decider – in addition to holding both the young rider and mountain jerseys.
 
Yves Lampaert (Deceuninck-Quick-Step) claimed the fastest time on the day with a benchmark of 21 minutes and 58 seconds, with Dennis only able to manage the sixth fastest time.
Egan Bernal

Egan Bernal

I was in a fight for this jersey with the world time trial champion so I should be happy with the performance.
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Reaction

- Egan Bernal

“It’s for sure a surprise for me to be here in the yellow jersey. This morning I thought that maybe I would lose yellow and now I’m still here. I was in a fight for this jersey with the world time trial champion so I should be happy with the performance.

“In a left-hand corner I almost fell and I was a little bit scared because I took the corner really fast. It was a risk but I think that I took a couple of seconds in the corner.
 
“Tomorrow I think we should just try to keep the jersey, not do anything crazy. There’s one day to go. If Bahrain want to win the race they will try something but we just need to keep hold of it.”
Stage eight result:

1. Yves Lampaert (Deceuninck-Quick-Step) 21:58
2. Kasper Asgreen (Deceuninck-Quick-Step) +5"
3. Soren Kragh Andersen (Team Sunweb) +10"
4. Tom Scully (EF Education First) +13"
5. Patrick Bevin (CCC Team) s.t.
11. Egan Bernal (Team INEOS) +38"

Overall Standings:

1. Egan Bernal (Team INEOS) 24:40:24
2. Rohan Dennis (Bahrain Merida) +22"
3. Patrick Konrad (Bora-Hansgrohe) +1:46"
4. Domenico Pozzovivo (Bahrain Merida) +1:54"
5. Jan Hirt (Astana) +1:55"