Tour de Suisse 2025 Stage 3

June 17, 2025 It's not déjà vu, the race starts in Aarau just the same as yesterday but the riders will go due East to Heiden instead. The stage is 195KM with 3,000M of climbing but there are no categorized climbs until the Knolhusen (5.2KM at 6.2%) at 17KM from the finish. Before that however, the roads are constantly up or down. The Tissot Kilometer starts with 64KM to go and once through the village of Meistersrüte, the riders begin a 10KM descent into the base of the Knolhusen. Büriswilen (2KM at 6.9%) starts directly after the descent off of Knolhusen and the top of Büriswilen is 10KM from the finish. A 6KM plateau leads the riders to the final climb to the finish in Heiden, 3.4KM at 5.3%. Any chance of rain is behind the riders as the sun was out in full. After about 15 minutes racing, a strong group of six riders got away including Emiel Verstrynge of Alpecin-Deceuninck, Nans Peters of Decathlon AG2R, Samuele Battistella and Max Walker of EF-Education EasyPost, Quinn Simmons of Lidl-Trek, and Brent Van Moer of Lotto. They had just under 2 minutes 30 seconds with 83KM to go with Olivier Le Gac of Groupama-FDJ doing the work in the peloton along with Roland Thalmann of Tudor Pro Cycling. Van Moer won the first of the Tissot Kilometer sprints ahead of Verstrynge but Verstrynge took the second one. Their times on GC are of no consequence but a nice Tissot watch is on offer each day for the winner across the two sprints. The countryside through the sprint in Magdenau to Herisau was quintessential Switzerland with lush green hills and pastures, typical chalet style homes, and larger Alpine mountains off in the distance. With 62KM to go, Stefan Küng of Groupama-FDJ went to the front of the peloton along with a few Arkéa-B&B Hotels riders and brought the gap down 35 seconds over the next 10KM. By the time the break hit the Intermediate Sprint in Appenzell with 41KM to go, the gap was down to 1 minute 40 seconds and the break were forced to put in more effort to stay out front. Walker was the first casualty to drop from the break at 38KM from the finish and it wasn't long before Peters was gone too. The shape of the peloton changed with 36KM to go as teams started to push to the front in anticipation of a descent off the plateau from Appenzell down into Altstätten where the first categorized climb of Knolhusen begins. The break started the proper descent with 31KM to go and a gap of 40 seconds. The gap was just 15 seconds as the road started to grind up on the Knolhusen with Tudor Pro Cycling doing much of the pace making in the peloton. Groupama-FDJ took over near the bottom and the gap went back out by about 10 seconds but it wasn't enough for Simmons who attacked the break with 20KM to go. At the top with 17KM to go, Simmons had 45 seconds on the peloton who had caught Verstrynge, Van Moer, and Battistella. The gap was 38 seconds with 12KM to go at the start of the climb to Büriswilen. There seemed to be a standoff in the peloton but the accord was broken by Jan Christen of UAE-XRG. As aggressive as the attack was, it did not snap the elastic. Oddly, Juan Pedro López of Lidl-Trek counter attacked and only helped lure the race closer to his teammate up the road. López was caught at the top with 10KM to go but it pulled the peloton to within 30 seconds to Simmons. No team was willing to commit resources to the chase which caused stop-start attacking. Neilson Powless of EF-Education EasyPost was able to get a gap on the peloton with 7.5KM to go but only had enough power to hold the gap to Simmons to around 30 seconds. Simmons started the final climb with just under 4KM to go with a 33 second gap to Powless but crucially had 45 seconds on the peloton. Israel-Premier Tech took up the chase and caught Powless 1,800M from the finish but there was not enough fire power to bring Simmons back. He took his third win of the year and his second at World Tour level. João Almeida of UAE-XRG won the sprint for second place ahead of Oscar Onley of Picnic-PostNL. The top 8 in GC remain unchanged as nearly 30 riders came to the finish together, 18 seconds behind Simmons. The complexion of the race starts to change tomorrow with the inclusion of higher and longer mountains that only become more prevalent as the days go on.