We start the Tour of Romandie here today with a short 5km prologue. Some, like Fiedler or Van Winden are looking for the stage, some, like Amador or Dekker, are looking for a few seconds early on GC, and some, like Monsalve or Nazaret just don't want to lose too much time. All in all a strong field for the stage and a lot of GC riders are also expected to do well. Beautiful conditions in the historic lakeside town of Nyon, hopefully setting the tone for the race itself.
Tolosa's time will surely be beaten but he will reside in the hot seat for a while with an early benchmark of 6'31".
Van Winden is the first favourite to start, in fact, he's only 12th to start - generali it's not the best decision to have your TT favourite the first of the team (especially with no GC contender) but whatever works, works. And work it does: he smashes the time of Tolosa by a solid 18 seconds - we could see bigger gaps than expected today!
Nazaret could lose decent time today and he's the biggest GC name to go early on - he's in a not overly calamitous 28 seconds off the pace.
Gonzalez Salas is the next stage favourite out on the course here in Nyon - he can't beat Van Winden though, he's 8 seconds down and is in 2nd for now.
Norweigan champ Haugard could be in with a shout here - he's 2 seconds faster than Gonzalez but six seconds off the pace.
Oliveira is the champion of Portugal and delivers a performance - that doesn't befit the title. He's in 7th at the moment.
How to upset the odds 101: beat the Flying Dutchman of Generali by a single damned second! Kuboki is the man next in the hot seat.
Rui Costa will want a day in the leader's jersey after stage 4 - but he'll need to place solidly here. He's a reasonable 7th, only 11 seconds off Kuboki.
Janse van Rensburg will be close in his rainbow jersey (of South Africa, not the world)... he'll be very very very close - it'll be within a second or two...
Spoiler
After a check with our official timers of Tissot, he's second... by less than a second! Oh my days, what a tight finish.
Another specialist in Cornu will be unsure if the likes of Janse van Rensburg have had amazing days or Van Winden has had a shocker. He'll be very close, within a second again... and he slots in between Janse van Rensburg and our leader Kuboki by mere centimetres, hundredths of a second!
Maybe one of the last men who can snatch the stage from Kuboki is Yoann Paillot - he's a man on a mission, clearly not as distracted by this pair of gorgeous blondes as our cameraman! or maybe he was - hard to tell with sunglasses. It could be why he disappoints - seventh all he can muster.
Sanchez Gil is the reigning champion and although he may not be the favourite this year can always surprise. He crosses himself for luck and goes on to place 13 seconds down.
Machado isn't the best prologue rider, but is respectable enough that not losing more than a handful of seconds to Dekker or Amador isn't unreasonable for the diminutive Portuguese. He's only 14 seconds off the pace.
Intxausti is the Spanish ITT champ and also a GC man - it could be an opportunity to fashion an early advantage. However, he's 11 seconds behind the leading time.
Fiedler is the ultimate favourite and German Champion. No heartbreak for Kuboki though - he's 6th, 4 seconds down.
Úran Úran is another GC man with a very good TT. He's only 7 seconds down.
Amador is the Costa Rican champion among a lot of other National Champions here in Switzerland - he's 13 seconds down though, opening the door for
Dekker to take 8 seconds off him and a good stage placing to boot. He's our last guy to finish, so we can award the yellow jersey to an unlikely suspect.
Kazushige Kuboki!
Spoiler
Talk about a cock-up... Yeah, no result other than the top 10 above. Points and GC are the same and if you want to know where someone is I can tell you using their stage 2 results/GC. Youth is:
Yoann Paillot
Phan Age Haugard
Mario Gonzalez Salas in that order and the teams classification is obviously lead by Generali-AXA.
