‘Quietly confident’ Ethan Hayter takes Tour de Romandie stage two win

Ethan Hayter took his third Tour de Romandie stage win in the last two years at a veritable canter today.

The Brit also took the lead in the general classification displacing GB team-mate and namesake Ethan Vernon, who took the jersey with sprint victory yesterday but was dropped on the final climb of today’s race.

The Ineos Grenadiers rider was expertly led out in the fast, mostly straight run in to the line, by former Tour de France champion Egan Bernal and Jhonatan Narváez and when he open up his sprint there was no-one who could match him.

Hot Spanish talent Juan Auyso was second for UAE-Emirates and will continue to hold the young rider classification jersey with Romain Bardet (DSM) in third. Fellow British rider Oscar Onley was fifth.

After the hilly race the Londoner said: "I was climbing quite well yesterday...  I was quietly confident in making it to the finish."

He added: “Maybe the sprint wasn’t so close but to get there was the hard part. It was a pretty hard stage with Jumbo-Visma making the pace on the last climbs and there were quite a lot of attacks especially at the end.

“We had to go a bit early but I think it was best with all the roundabouts to stay out of trouble. Then I was just waiting, waiting, waiting for the guys to come from behind and I was trying not to go too early because Jhonny did a long long way then I saw someone coming and I started to wind-up the sprint.”

It’ll be the second time the Ineos Grenadiers rider has worn the Tour de Romandie leaders jersey. Last year he took it with victory in the prologue but then crashed while riding at the back of the bunch on stage one. 

He bounced back swiftly to win the sprint on stage two though and pressed his finger to his lips in a gesture to silence critics of his positioning the day before.

Tomorrow he’ll take on the 19 kilometre climbing time trial.

He said: “It’s going to be nice to wear the jersey in the time trial. It’s a bit of a shame not to wear my national champs kit but to go off last in the time trial [is good]. It may be a bit hilly tomorrow but I'll give it a go.”