Reusser and Longo Borghini compare themselves to trucks after the Tour de Suisse time trial

Marlen Reusser stole the show in front of her home crowd on Saturday at the Tour de Suisse for women. The Swiss rider from Movistar turned her 55-second deficit to UAE ADQ rival Elisa Longo Borghini into a 10-second lead, with a grueling mountain stage ahead on Sunday. Afterward , both riders metaphorically compared themselves to a truck.

"It's truly an incredibly beautiful day for me," said a proud Reusser to CyclingProNet. "I actually wanted to stick to a risky pacing strategy. I figured you can make up less time on the way back than on the way there. But then my power meter—or the connection to it—stopped working, so I didn’t have any data,” she explained.

"I think that's why I started off just a little too fast. But in the end, it all worked out, so I was lucky. But it was definitely a real struggle on the bike, yeah," she says with a big smile. "I think the problem was that I rode the first kilometer really, really fast! So after that first kilometer, I was already almost dead, but after that I did find my rhythm."

"One of the coaches on our team always says I'm a 'camion'—a truck, you know? And I think my strengths as a 'truck' really shine the longer the distance," Reusser explains in her own words. “For example, I really thought Zoe [Bäckstedt] was going to win, or that she was at least the one to beat. But I think a shorter distance suits her better, and the longer it gets, the more my ‘truck’ qualities pay off.”

So Longo Borghini lost the yellow jersey, and she, too, compared herself to a truck. “I’m like a Scania in a wind tunnel,” she sighed in an interview with CyclingProNet. “The time trials just aren’t going well for me this year; I don’t know why. My stats and power output are fine on their own, but I just don’t feel satisfied with my performance.”

"But I tried to defend myself as best I could, and I think I'm in a good position heading into tomorrow. I'm really looking forward to tomorrow's stage," she says, referring to the final stage to Villars-sur-Ollons. "I just can't generate the power I'd like to on the time trial bike—the kind of power I normally produce on a road bike. So yeah, that's a little disappointing. But it is what it is."

So Longo Borghini will have to go on the attack on Sunday. “I don’t really look at the results; I focus on my own performance. But of course, losing a minute and ten seconds to Marlen—that’s okay. She’s the world champion. I would have liked to keep the jersey, of course, but it is what it is.”