The Tour de Suisse, the final WorldTour cycling race before the Tour de France, started Saturday, but the real race started with a long mountain stage Sunday, 218 km through the Swiss Alps from Verbania, Italy to Verbier, Switzerland.
Peter Sagan of Liquigas won Saturday’s Prologue, a short (7.3 km) time trial with a hill in the middle which favored Sagan’s power. But the Tour de Suisse is a climbers’ race, and Stage Two showed that with a pair of Hors Categorie (beyond categorization) climbs: the Simplon Pass in the middle of the stage and then a mountaintop finish in Verbier.
Movistar’s Rui Costa won Stage Two with a well-timed attack. RadioShack-Nissan’s Frank Schleck attacked in the first third of the 8.8-km final climb, hoping to open enough of a gap early that no one could catch him.
It didn’t work as planned: Costa launched his own attack 2,000 meters from the summit and caught the RadioShack rider 150 meters from the finish line. Schleck had nothing left; Costa took the win and the race lead.
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