Swiss disappoint in tour prologue

Laurent Dufaux was not in top form during Saturday's prologue of the Tour de France Keystone

Only one of the three Swiss riders taking part in the Tour de France finished among the twenty best riders in Saturday's prologue in Luxembourg.

Rubens Bertogliati came 19th in the seven-kilometre individual time trial, finishing in 9 minutes and 25 seconds.

It came as a surprise that the 23-year-old rider achieved the best Swiss time as he was expected to play a more peripheral role next to fellow rider Laurent Dufaux.

However, the 33-year-old Dufaux, who skipped last weekend’s Swiss championships, only finished in 35th place.

He is considered the Swiss favourite, as he was the last Swiss to have achieved a stage victory, which he earned during the 1996 Tour de France.

Before this year’s race Dufaux’s biggest concern was fighting off his nasty cold. “I can’t say if I’ll be 100 per cent for Saturday’s prologue but I will have got my legs back in shape,” he said before the race.

The third Swiss rider, Beat Zberg, came 32nd, finishing the prologue in nine minutes and 29 seconds.

Yellow jersey

The American cyclist Lance Armstrong began his bid for a fourth straight Tour de France title by winning the prologue in nine minutes and eight seconds and taking the leader’s yellow jersey.

The 30-year-old from Texas topped the Frenchman Laurent Jalabert by nearly two seconds. Taimondas Rumsas of Lithuania came third, three seconds behind Armstrong.

Armstrong rode during a break in rain that had threatened to make the course slick. “The weather was so-so, but I saw that the sun was coming out just before I started,” Armstrong said after the race.

swissinfo with agencies