DISCUSSION Tour de Suisse Stage 2 | Did Jan Christen disobey UAE's tactics with late attack?

The second stage of the Tour de Suisse featured another hilly finale suiting the puncheurs once again, and the ending proved to be as chaotic as expected.

Right after the start was given, three riders (Mauro Schmid, Jonas Rutsch and Silvan Dillier) attacked and formed the breakaway of the day with complete consent from the peloton.

However, they never enjoyed a bigger gap than two minutes, given that many teams wanted to fight for the stage win in a potential bunch sprint. Picnic and Bora were the teams assuming the responsibility to chase, catching the three men in the break still with plenty of kilometres to go.

The final part was constantly uphill, with gradients around 3-4%. Even if not the steepest finale, it was enough to take the pure sprinters out of the equation. Vincenzo Albanese from Education First was the fastest man of the day and secured his fourth professional win.

Once the stage finished, we asked some of our writers to share their thoughts and main takeaways about what happened today.

It was great to see Vincenzo Albanese get over the line in a 'big' race, taking the first World Tour win of his career after so often being close to a breakthrough over the past few years.

Ultimately though, I don't think there was too much to note about this stage, except perhaps the late attack of Jan Christen being a sign of things to come from a UAE Team Emirates uncharacteristically off the pace already in terms of the GC.

Yeah, definitely not much worth mentioning. the profile wasn't too hard for the riders and it was expected to have a sprint finish. Jan Christen tried to make a late surprise but i think he timed the attack wrongly. I thought maybe we were having some Mallorca vibes where he would attack, get chased and maybe Morgado would go for the win afterwards but, again, the profile wasn't selective enough to be this offensive.

Worth mentioning this is Vincenzo Albanese's first World Tour victory, which is always a landmark for any rider. Considering he is only on his 2nd World Tour season it is a good display and certainly a race he'll never forget.

Stage without much of a story. 3 men formed the day's breakaway very early on and remained at the front of the race until the penultimate climb of the day, when the front trio broke away. Red Bull and Picnic PostNL were in control of the peloton for practically the entire stage.

On the penultimate climb, Tudor came to the front and increased the pace in the peloton, which completely fragmented the group and cancelled out the escapees' advantage.

On the climb to the finish line, EF surged ahead of the peloton, showing that they intended to play for the stage, and controlled things until just under 3 kilometres from the finish Jan Christen pulled away, trying to surprise everyone.

Christen entered the final kilometre with a relative advantage, but it was clear that he was struggling and the chase he was being given, now by more teams as EF was unable to close the gap, proved fatal for the UAE rider. In the end Albanese won, launching his sprint 200 metres from the finish line to raise his arms with relative ease.

I like the Tour de Suisse, there are no boring flat stages in which the final outcome (bunch sprint) is already known before the start. Today was arguably the flattest day of the whole edition, and despite that, pure sprinters didn’t prevail.

Still, what surprised me was that a relatively big group arrived together at the last 5km. Given the uphill terrain (even if not the steepest), I expected the race to break and a reduced group including the GC contenders and puncheurs to fight for the victory.

But that wasn’t the case, there were very few attempts to break the bunch for some reason. Sprinters such as Pavel Bittner knew that today was the only opportunity to shine and didn’t want to give it up, which makes sense. Only Jan Christen tried something, a brave move as usual even if unsuccessful this time.

Too bad he didn’t inform his team about his intentions and didn’t follow the team’s tactics, which were to sprint with António Morgado, according to Mikkel Bjerg’s comments after the stage finished.

UAE is a circus every time Tadej Pogacar is not riding. There have been countless examples, most notably a few weeks ago with Juan Ayuso at the Giro, and today is just a new chapter of a never-ending book. How is it possible that the most powerful team in the world has such issues?

Yesterday they failed to properly control the race and Almeida already admitted that the GC is almost over, today Christen ignored the team instructions and looked for his own glory. Besides, it was his own teammate who publicly exposed his disobedience instead of handling the situation in private. What a circus. I am expectant to see what will happen tomorrow.