Team Visma | Lease a Bike see neo-pro Jorgen Nordhagen come short of the best on first GC day in Romandie: "The race was incredibly hard today"

Boosted by Matthew Brennan's sprint victory in first stage, Team Visma | Lease a Bike entered the second stage of Tour de Romandie with courage even though the Dutch lacks an outright GC favourite. All their hopes were pinned on just a 20-year-old Jorgen Nordhagen.

But unfortunately for the Norwegian neo-pro, this stage was also marked out by Remco Evenepoel's Soudal - Quick-Step which completed shifted the momentum of today's stage with only the best left at the top of Le Chaumont.

Nordhagen missed a bit to go with the best but eventually settled with a group that arrived 20 seconds after Evenepoel's. "It’s a pity Jørgen just couldn’t catch up, otherwise there might have been a good result," sports director Maarten Wynants says in press release.

He continues: "But it’s certainly no shame that he just missed the split as a young rider. Especially with the strong field of participants here in Switzerland. The race was incredibly hard today. It soon became clear that we couldn’t sprint with Matthew again. At first, we tried to bring him back through good work by Julien and Menno, but when we saw that the chance of a stage win was out of the question, we decided to save strength for tomorrow."

The sports director is referring to the third stage on Friday. After another four categorized climbs, the stage could well turn into a sprint. "That will be quite a challenge," Wynants knows. "The Col du Mollendruz is another big climb right before the finish line. We're going for it again. Unfortunately, we have to do that without Daniel McLay. He didn't feel fit today and had to abandon today’s stage."

It will far from easy day for Matthew Brennan on Friday the shallow slopes of climbs near Cossonay might be enough to motivate GC teams to take action, allowing more versatile sprinters such as the 19-year-old Brit to play their card on final 2.2 kilometer 5.7% climb that brings riders back to Cossonay.