Rohan Dennis wins Stage 1 at the Virtual Tour of Suisse

Rohan Dennis (Team Ineos) continues to dominate vitual cycling winning the opening mountain stage of the Digital Swiss 5

After winning the Ineos Alpe du Zwift race, Dennis showed his virtual climbing prowess on the opening 26.6 km mountain stagefrom Moudon to Leukerbad stage in the Swiss Alps

The Australian dominated the race in the second half, overtaking leading riders Australian duo Whelan and Luke Durbridge (Mitchelton-Scott) who broke away before the first big climb

Mathias Frank (AG2R La Mondiale) suffered what is now called a "digital puncture" losing his intenet connection on not being able to continue.

As the first climb kicked in Dennis and Ineos teammate Cameron Wurf moved to the front of the Australian lead race.

Race favorite Remco Evenepoel (Deceuninck-QuickStep) started to move up to the head of the race.

It was 10 km into the race and Dennis upped his pace to over 6 W/kg and quickly distanced Durbridge and Whelan.

Over the first climb after some 38 minutes, Whelan was trailng Dennis by 20 seconds ahead of Nicolas Roche (Team Sunweb) who moved up to third some 20 seconds down with Evenepoel a further 58 seconds behind the race leader.

Dennis lead increased to 40 seconds on the descent coming into the final climb, behind Roche had just about caught Whelan.

Evenepoel had lost time  finishing in seventh place almost two minutes down on GC.

Stage 2 is four laps of an 11.5km circuit around the town that will host the start of the 2021 Tour de Suisse. There are a couple of short, sharp inclines on each lap but with only 180m of cumulative climbing, this should be a day for the sprinters. 

Broadcast begins: 07:10 PST, 11:10 EST, 16:10 GMT, 17:10 CET tomorrow April 23rd.

VIDEO: Virtual Tour of Switzerland Stage 1

Virtual Tour of Switzerland Stage 1 Top 10

1 Rohan Dennis (Aus) Team Ineos 0:53:07
2 Nicolas Roche (Irl) Team Sunweb 0:01:10
3 James Whelan (Aus) EF Pro Cycling 0:01:28
4 Chris Hamilton (Aus) Team Sunweb 0:01:39
5 Ben O'Connor (Aus) NTT Pro Cycling 0:02:04
6 Luke Durbridge (Aus) Mitchelton-Scott 0:02:17
7 Remco Evenepoel (Bel) Deceuninck-QuickStep 0:02:37
8  Pieter Serry (Bel) Deceuninck-QuickStep 0:03:14
9 Lawson Craddock (USA) EF Pro Cycling 0:03:15
10 Cameron Wurf (Aus) Team Ineos 0:03:35