Liam Slock can finally say he's won a professional bike race, but he just might wait until his second to mount the evidence above the mantelpiece. Or maybe he won't. We hope for the latter.
"Luckily the win came with it, otherwise this would probably have been the fail of the year,” Slock said afterwards. “There was an incredibly strong wind and I briefly underestimated it. I realised quite early that I was going to win and started celebrating early because I really wanted to enjoy the moment. I raised my arms in the air and then a gust of wind caught my handlebars...
"The fact that I then crashed makes this a story worth framing. It feels a bit silly, but above all I’m just incredibly happy.”
The 25-year-old Belgian is in Switzerland, where on Sunday he lined up at the GP Gippingen, a lumpy 1.1-ranked event where much of the Tour de Suisse peloton likes to stretch their legs before WorldTour racing resumes on Wednesday. Past winners of the 62-year-old one-day race include Neilson Powless, Maxim van Gils, Thibau Nys, Marc Hirschi and Alexander Kristoff. And now Liam Slock.
It was a day largely controlled by Jayco-AlUla and Lidl-Trek, with top favourites Swiss national champ Mauro Schmid and Thibau Nys in their squads. The breakaway was neutralised about 50 km from the finish, and despite multiple attacks, most of the favourites stayed together until the last of seven climbs of the Rotberg that peaked out about 10 km from the line.
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