The first mountain stage at the Tour de Romandie saw Team dsm-firmenich PostNL ride actively in the beginning of the day, with Sean Flynn making it into the break of seven. Working well together, Flynn’s break built up a lead of roughly six minutes before the peloton began to set a solid tempo behind. On the penultimate climb of the day Flynn had to let go of the group, while behind in the bunch the rest of the team looked after Gijs Leemreize, before positioning him onto the final ascent. With the remnants of the breakaway still out front, the pace was high in the bunch, with Leemreize riding strongly. As the kilometres ticked by the tempo increased even further and Leemreize just had to let go of the peloton in the final few hundred metres.
Speaking after the stage Leemreize said: “The plan was to have someone in the break and Sean made it in there, so that was good for us. The other guys then kept me safe over the whole day. Towards the final climb they did a great job with the positioning, so I started the climb in a good position. There was quite some headwind on the first part of the climb, so the group was still big going into the final kilometre. There, the pace went up and I just wasn’t able to follow anymore in the finale. The time gaps were still relatively small though, so there is still a lot possible in the coming days.”