Mäder won Stage 8 of the Tour de Suisse after catching Woods on the descent from the main climb of Gotthard Pass while Carapaz sealed the overall victory. Carapaz followed attacks by Rigoberto Uran (EF Education-Nippo) on the ascent of Gotthard Pass before riding into the finish and maintaining his 17-second advantage on the race standings.
Meanwhile, Mäder escaped the leading group on the final climb, hunting down Woods on the descent before beating him in the sprint finish in Andermatt.
“I came to the Tour de Suisse with the ambition to do well on general classification,” said Mäder. “I messed that up on Stage 3 and that now (to win stage 8) I’m just incredibly happy. If they (the chasers) caught us I would have finished with nothing but at least I would have had a second place.
Advertisement
“And then I was just hoping something was left in my legs and in my head that keeps me going. It is a big win and the way I won today was completely different to the way I won out of a breakaway. I think I can say now I’ve arrived.”
Mattia Cattaneo (Deceuninck-QuickStep) led the group of favourites group home, nine seconds behind Mäder, with Carapaz securing the overall win ahead of Rigoberto Uran and Jakob Fuglsang (Astana-Premier Tech).
“I’m really happy it’s a team victory as we’ve all worked together really well,” said Carapaz. “When you know you do things well you always get your reward and we have got a lot of confidence for what is to come.
Carapaz, the 2019 Giro d'Italia winner was asked whether the Tour De France was a goal for him, or if he will be riding in a support role for previous Tour winner Geraint Thomas.
“The truth is this is a showing of the strength of the team that we have and of course I am going to share the leadership with Geraint,” Carapaz added. “We just want to win the Tour (de France) and depending how it goes and we are going to go there with a strong team.”
Every moment of the 2021 Tour de France will be live on SBS, with the ŠKODA Tour Tracker app, SBS TV and the SBS Cycling Central the place to be to catch all the pulsating action from France from June 26 to July 18.
