"The finish was hectic" - Romain Bardet 5th on stage 5 of the Tour de Suisse

In and amongst a chaotic finish to stage 5 of the 2023 Tour de Suisse, Romain Bardet impressed, sprinting to 5th place on the day and remaining 7th overall.

"I’m really proud of the whole team today; they were amazing,” explained Bardet to the official website of Team DSM post-stage. “Everyone gave their 100 percent all the way to make the stage hard. The effort they put in is remarkable. I did my best on the last climb to be with the best, sprinting for second but the finish was hectic and I haven’t been able to really reward them for the hard work. It’s still a big step forward as a group to have this commitment to something, the guys were great.”

Juan Ayuso took the stage after a brilliant solo move. With Bardet coming home 54 seconds back, the Frenchman remains 7th in the general classification, now 1:29 down on the new, overall leader of the race, Mattias Skjelmose.

“The plan was not to chase anything down in the beginning of the stage as such but instead make a hard pace so that there was something fatigue coming into the group which hopefully would then help Romain to try something in the final," explains Team DSM coach Pim Ligthart. "He was up there again with the best five in the race. He had to let go of the yellow jersey group a bit on the final climb but came back down really quickly on the downhill and was in the mix in the sprint for second. Day by day we’re getting better here.”