Michael Storer wins stage 2 of the Tour of the Alps and takes overall lead!

Michael Storer has won the second stage of the Tour of the Alps with an incredible solo attack on the final climb of the day. The chasing group finished a whopping 40 seconds behind, and so Storer takes the overall lead.

In the early part of the race, a breakaway was formed featuring Fran Miholjević (Bahrain), Koen Bouwman (Jayco Alula) and Lukas Meiler (Team Vorarlberg). As the trio took on the second climb of the day, the gap was 4 minutes 30 to the peloton and Bouwman momentarily took the virtual lead of the race.

That didn’t last though, and with 45km to go the breakaway was caught as the peloton surged on. Then, disaster struck for Antonio Tiberi, who had to abandon due to illness. This is horrendous news for Bahrain – Victroious, Tiberi, and Italian cycling as a whole, given he was supposed to be one of the main riders at the Giro d’Italia next month. Can he recover in time?

With around 20km to go, Decathlon’s Geoffrey Bouchard attacked, only to be caught as the peloton started the final climb of the day. At the front, it was Marco Frido of Israel – Premier Tech pulling the peloton, and they managed to drop Emil Herzog on the Telves di Sopra.

A big attack then came from Tudor Pro’s Michael Storer, who started motoring up the climb. But could he hang on, and could he even take the leader's jersey?

With 4km to go, Storer had a gap of 12 seconds from the chasers. And the gap just kept on going out, and with it came the race lead. In the end, Storer stormed to victory and the overall lead, and over half a minute ahead of the chasers.

He will certainly be a very difficult man to pull back over the coming stages.