Tour of the Alps 2024 Stage 1

April 15, 2024 The Tour of the Alps is the final tune up for those headed to the Giro and its a good form guide for what we may see in the first Grand Tour of the year. A break of 6 got away after 30KM and still had three and half minutes with 50KM to go. The pair of Polti-Kometa riders, Mattia Bais and Andrea Garosio were the last two left in the front over the first of two passages of the Penon climb. Decathlon AG2R's Larry Warbasse led the peloton back around to Penon for the last time and brought the leaders' gap down to under a minute in the process. They were caught on the lower, steep section of the climb with just over 20KM to race. No one ventured an attack on the climb so over 20 riders went over the top together. Romain Bardet of DSM-Firmenich and Esteban Chaves of EF-Education EasyPost led the group down and put pressure on the rest of the favorites group. A group of 6 formed on the flat road with 5 chasing about 10 seconds back. The two groups merged with 9KM to go, leaving 11 at the front. Groups behind were coming together and threatened to catch the leader, causing riders in the front to lose organization and miss pulls. At 3KM to go, the first attempts to break clear started. Tobias Foss of Ineos, Chris Harper of Jayco AlUla, Ben O'Connor of Decathlon AG2R and Chaves got away under 1KM to race. Foss was the quickest in that quartet and took the win and race leader's jersey. Harper and Chaves took second and third with the rest of the front group coming in just 3 seconds back.