The Tour de Romandie continued to be a happy hunting ground for Katusha in 2015 as the team celebrated overall victory through 25-year-old Ilnur Zakarin while Simon Špilak finished second for the third straight year. Maxim Belkov delivered further success as he won both the points and mountains classification while Katusha also claimed the team classification leaving Thibaut Pinot (best young rider) as the only-non Katusha classification winner.
Zakarin started the final day 17.3km time trial in the leaders yellow jersey after placing second on the queen stage to Champex-Lac with two-time winner Chris Froome (Team Sky) just 14 seconds in arrears. An inspired ride by Zakarin saw him finish third on the stage, 13 seconds down on stage winner Tony Martin (Etixx-Quick Step), which included a bike swap mid way through.
"Normally I like the TT races and I have had some good results," 2013 Russian national time trial champion Zakain said. "But during the last two years, step-by-step I have tried to improve my abilities as a climber. It was a hard way to do it but I lost maybe 10kg to get more speed in the mountains. Of course when you improve in one area you lose in another, but later there is a chance to find a good balance. Now I am there, but I see a lot of things to improve. I want to continue my development as a rider."
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Zakarin tested positive to the anabolic steroid methandienone in 2009 which saw him handed a two-year ban as he made his comeback to the sport in 2011 with the Itera-Katusha team. Zakarin then rode for the Pro-Continental RusVelo team for two seasons before joining Katusha his season. After debuting with the team in Argentina placing tenth overall at the Tour de San Luis, ninth overall at Vuelta Ciclista al Pais Vasco suggested Zakarin was adjusting to WorldTour level racing but almost all fell apart when a mechanical forced a bike swap.
"The bike change was my mistake. At the top of the climb I had to slow my pace a little bit and not push so hard on the pedals to change the gear. But I pushed it too hard and the chain got stuck. But the mechanics did a perfect job and changed my bike very fast," Zakarin explained.
While aiming to continue his good start to the season at the Swiss race, Zakarin added that overall victory was wholly unexpected.
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