Fabian Cancellara wins ninth stage and Levi Leipheimer takes overall lead in 2011 Tour de Suisse
Leopard Trek team’s Fabian Cancellara won the final and ninth stage of 2011 Tour de Suisse on Sunday, June 19. Levi Leipheimer snatches his overall leader’s yellow jersey from Damiano Cunego.
Four times World Time Trial Champion Fabian took a total of 41 minutes and 1 second to cover the distance of 32.1 kilometres.
After winning the stage, Fabian said, “It was a nice race for me. I was a bit nervous on the bus watching Andreas and Levi. When you race early, you don’t have any reference times. I had to trust that I knew what to do and that I would get out everything
I had in my legs.”
Recently, Cancellara took first Prologue of Tour de Luxembourg and won the seventh stage of Tirreno-Adriatico. He also grabbed the second spot in Milan-San Remo race.
RadioShack rider Andreas Kloden was in the second position with 9 seconds and race leader Levi Leipheimer finished third with 13 seconds behind Fabian.
Damiano had a disappointing time trial and grabbed the 39th spot with 2 minutes and 16 seconds behind Fabian.
Thomas De Gendt of Vacansoleil-DCM pro cycling was also in good form, but was unable to maintain his pace and grabbed the eighth spot with 48 seconds down.
RadioShack team’s Levi Leipheimer took the overall lead with a timing of 31 hours, 45 minutes and 2 seconds. Damiano Cunego of Lampre-ISD was the runner-up with a difference of 4 seconds.
Levi told the media, “What a race. I really didn’t know how close it was with Cunego. All I heard was my director yelling at me in the last corner ‘Sprint! Sprint!’ and I could hear in his voice that it really was a question of seconds.”
Steven Kruijswijk of Rabobank cycling team was in third spot with 1 minute and 2 seconds and Jakob Fuglsang of Leopard Trek finished fourth with 1 minute and 10 seconds behind Levi.
The stage winner’s Fabian overall in 98th spot ahead of Robert Hunter and Matthew Harley.
Peter Sagan took overall points classification with 86 points ahead of Jose Joaquin and Tejey Van. Andy Schleck won the title of mountain classification with 44 points and Lloyd Mondory won overall sprint classification with 27 points.
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