Astana's Jan Hirt 5th in Tour de Suisse stage 7

NUR-SULTAN. KAZINFORM - The Tour de Suisse has entered in its final and the most decisive part. Today the peloton passed the longest stage 7 of 216.6 with three categorized climbs, including two passes of 2000 meters above the sea level, Lukmanierpass (1915 m) and the famous St. Gotthard (2091 m), which was topping the today's stage.

After the daily breakaway has been caught on the first part of St. Gotthard, the peloton has been split off in parts due to high pace with only a small group of GC favorites remained in front of the race. The Spaniard Enric Mas was the first, who attacked from that group with around 6 km to go, but later he was caught back, firstly by Egan Bernal, who launched a counterattack with 3 km to go, and later by some other riders, including Astana's Jan Hirt.

Finally, Bernal won the stage, while Jan Hirt once again took a solid Top-10 placement, finishing 5th, 34 seconds behind the Colombian rider.

"Of course, it was a long and tough stage, but, in general I felt good during the day. I've missed a bit to follow Bernal's attack, but later I've managed step by step to come back, taking seconds back and catching the rivals one by one. Yeah, it was another Top-10 for me, but today I believe I could do more. Anyway, now I have to recover as good as possible and to concentrate on tomorrow's TT. And, on Sunday, we will see if I could do something else," said Jan Hirt.

In the general classification of the Tour de Suisse Egan Bernal is the leader, having 41 seconds on Rohan Dennis and 1.13 on Patrick Konrad. Jan Hirt is 5th, 1.19 behind the leader.

The race will continue tomorrow with a 19.2 km long individual time trial in Ulrichen.