After the initial flat breather in the first stage, the Czech Tour prepared some more serious cycling in its second act - after the start from Zlín, four climbing premiums including the double climb to Pustevny. At the top of them, the leader's jersey changed, hands as Marc Hirschi of UAE Team Emirates took it after the stage triumph.
Friday's 172.6 km significantly shuffled the standings as set by the first day of the national tour. After a day's reign by Quick-Step's Luca Lamperti, there is a new ruler of the peloton, who made the kind of entrance his stablemate Pogačar is renowned for in the final kilometre.
The 25-year-old Swiss rider first caught DSM's Kevin Vermaerke, who had broken away from the group of top favourites in the final 3 km of the finishing climb and was already thinking about the lead, and immediately accelerated past the American to give him no chance to hide in the lee.
A long sprint to the finish saw Hirschi take an eight-second lead on his teammate Diego Ullisi, with Colombian Sergio Higuita in the Red Bull-Bora-hansgrohe colours a further seven seconds back in third.
"The tactic today was for me and Diego to ride, but everyone was waiting on the climb," said the Swiss winner of a 2020 Tour de France stage and now stage 2 of the Czech Tour. "But when you have the legs, and we had them, I went for it. It was tough to go up that climb twice, but we got the win and the leader's jersey."
It was a day of climbs, breakaways and finishing. Team Tudor's Maikel Zijlaard showed the fastest legs on the sprinters' premium and when the peloton reached the foot of the first climbing premium at kilometre 30, the field stretched. The biggest star of this year's Czech Tour, two-time world champion Julian Alaphilippe, who will have the mission of a lifetime in Paris in two weeks' time - an attack for gold at the home Olympics - went up to Doubrava for the six points.
It wasn't until the 80th kilometre that a breakaway was born, when Canadian Pier-André Côté of Israel Premier Tech Farm set off in search of a lucky break, taking a two-minute advantage from the peloton. Michal Schuran (ATT) and Tomas Kalojíros (Pierre Baguette) took up the chase, but the owner of the polka dot jersey was punished for a breakaway the previous day and reversed back to the main field, while Schuran caught the lone Canadian and won the second mountain stage.
The pair were subsequently joined by Spain's Javier Serrano (Polti Kometa) and Britain's Charlie Paige (TDT Unibet). These four brought a 3-minute advantage to Rožnov pod Radhoštěm. However, the breakaway split on the first climb to Pustevny, leaving Schuran with Serrano and the Czech rider eventually picking up the most summit points on his own.
After the descent from Pusteveny, 22 km from the end of the stage, the field of main stars merged and the race started from scratch. The favourites were going for a second time up the 9 km climb with the finish at 1010 metres above sea level, where Team Tudor was initially the most active for their Australian climber Michael Storer. But he was destroyed by a rider from across the ocean and at the very end Hirschi came to the rescue.
The latter will be wearing yellow on stage three and pondering how to hold on to the lead all the way to Sternberk, where the 16th edition of the Czech Tour will finish on Sunday. "Tomorrow," said the Swiss, "will be even harder, especially the finale. Today definitely suited me better, so we'll see what happens tomorrow."
On Saturday, the peloton will set off from Moravská Třebová, the hometown of race director Leopold König, over the Jeseníky peaks to the pumping station at Dlouhé stráně, quite possibly the Czech Tour's most challenging climb. On the 134-kilometre-long route, the riders will be tested by 2400 metres of elevation gain.
Foto: Jan Brychta, Lukáš Wagneter
