2012 Tour de Suisse
The 2012 Tour de Suisse was the 76th running of the Tour de Suisse cycling stage race. It started on 9 June with an individual time trial in Lugano and ended on 17 June, in Sörenberg after nine stages. It was the 17th race of the 2012 UCI World Tour season. The race was won by rider Rui Costa, who claimed the leader's yellow jersey after winning the second stage, and maintained the lead of the race until its conclusion holding off attacks from his rivals during the final two stages. Costa's winning margin over runner-up Fränk Schleck of – the 2010 winner – was fourteen seconds, and 's Levi Leipheimer, the defending champion, completed the podium, seven seconds down on Schleck and twenty-one behind Costa. In the race's other classifications, rider Matteo Montaguti won the mountains classification, 's Peter Sagan comfortably won the white jersey for the points classification, having won four stages during the race including the race-opening time trial stage. finished at the head of the teams classification, winning two of the last three stages through Fredrik Kessiakoff's seventh stage time trial victory and Tanel Kangert winning the final stage. Participating teams As the Tour de Suisse was a UCI World Tour event, all eighteen UCI ProTeams were invited automatically and obligated to send a squad. Two other squads – and – were given wildcard places into the race, and as such, formed the event's 20-team peloton. The twenty teams that competed in the race were: Stages Stage 1 9 June 2012 — Lugano, , individual time trial (ITT) For the third successive year, the race began with a short individual time trial in around the city of Lugano. Although starting and finishing at relatively the same height above sea level, the stage had a small hill – the western flank of Monte Brè – around midway through the parcours, being used in the race for the second year in succession, after then-world time trial champion Fabian Cancellara won the stage in a time of 9' 41" in 2011. Race organisers expected the best time for the stage to be four seconds slower than Cancellara's time from 2011, predicting a winning time of 9' 45" for the stage. After returning from injury in May's Bayern-Rundfahrt, Cancellara of was the undoubted favourite for the stage, having won the opening stage of the race on five separate occasions. The first rider to depart the start in Lugano was rider Will Routley, who recorded a time of 11' 33" for the course. His stay at the top of the timesheets was short, as the next two riders – 's Daniele Colli and Chris Anker Sørensen for – went substantially quicker than his time. Julien Bérard lowered the benchmark to 10' 29" for , before former Lithuanian national champion Ignatas Konovalovas () reduced the leading time further to 10' 24" before rider Thomas Löfkvist pushed the leading time into the low 10-minute times, setting a time of 10' 05" for the