Tour de Suisse 2025 Stage 4

June 18, 2025 Today's profile is an odd one. Starting in yesterday's finish town of Heiden, the riders set off South towards the high Alps but the first 111KM of the 193KM stage is about as flat as you're going to get in Switzerland. In the town of Thusis, the road starts to slowly tip upwards and continues in that way for the next 35KM, all the way to the top of the Splügenpass/Passo Dello Spluga on the Swiss/Italian border. Along the way is the category 3 climb of Sufers, which is part of the 35KM continuous uphill, and the Tissot Kilometer sprints with 56KM to go. The categorized part of the Splügenpass is 8.8KM at 7.3% but with 34KM of descending into Chiavenna and another 13KM of flat to the finish in Piuro, the race could be open to many different scenarios. A group of eight riders were in a break that took over an hour to form, four of which were Americans. Yesterday's animators Quinn Simmons of Lidl-Trek and Neilson Powless of EF-Education EasyPost were joined by Larry Warbasse and Marius Mayrhofer of Tudor Pro Cycling, Georg Zimmermann of Intermarché-Wanty, Sébastien Grignard of Lotto, Andrew August of Ineos, and Thomas Gloag of Visma-Lease a Bike. With 62KM to go and 6KM before the official start of the Splügenpass, only Simmons, Powless, Gloag, and August were still in the lead and they had 1 minute 10 seconds on the Groupama-FDJ led peloton. The gap was down to 40 seconds when the break started the categorized section of the Splügenpass with around 56KM to go. August was dropped as Simmons and Gloag lifted the pace but Mikkel Bjerg of UAE-XRG was drilling it on the front of the peloton. Powless was the last man caught with 53KM to go by the favorites group that had been whittled down to around 15 riders. Jan Christen took over for UAE-XRG and nearly split the bunch. When his turn was over, his teammate João Almeida attacked but he was unable to shed any riders from the group. Christen came back and set a pace that would discourage any dangerous counter attacking but with 3KM to climb, Almeida took it upon himself and rode on the front at the highest pace he could manage. Almeida's pace split the group down to Felix Gall of Decathlon AG2R, Ben O'Connor of Jayco AlUla, Oscar Onley of Picnic-PostNL, and Kévin Vauquelin of Arkéa-B&B Hotels with race leader Romain Grégoire of Groupama-FDJ struggling to hang on to group two. Vauquelin was next to drop with O'Connor following shortly after. Almeida never turned around to ask for help, he just continued to ride and with 1700M to climb, he rode Onley and Gall off his wheel and was alone at the front of the race. By the top with 47KM to go, dropped riders had consolidated into a chase group that contained O'Connor, Onley, Gall, Vauquelin, Matthew Riccitello of Israel-Premier Tech, Ilan Van Wilder of Soudal Quickstep, Clément Champoussin of XDS-Astana, and Pablo Castrillo of Movistar rider but they needed to close a 50 second gap to Almeida. Further behind, Grégoire summited along side Julian Alaphilippe of Tudor Pro Cycling and Lennard Kämna of Lidl-Trek, 1 minute 25 seconds after Almeida. When Almeida reached Chiavenna with 14KM to go after the long descent, he had 38 seconds on O'Connor and Vauquelin who had broken away from the chase group on the technical descent. Grégoire, Alaphilippe, and Kämna caught the rest of the chase group and they were at just 50 seconds. O'Connor and Vauquelin were swallowed up by the chase group with 12KM to race and as could be predicted, the speed went out of the group. They did manage to form a double paceline to peg Almeida at 40 seconds but it wasn't fast enough to take back much time. The bit of cohesion that was in the group fell out with 5.5KM to go when Onley rolled off the front after one rider skipped their turn. O'Connor bridged up and joined forces but there would be no catching Almeida. Onley beat O'Connor in the sprint for second, 40 seconds down on Almeida. The rest of the GC favorites came in 20 seconds later. On a day when we weren't sure how the race would play out, we were treated to an interesting battle and a proper sorting out of where each GC favorite sits in terms of their fitness. Grégoire held on to his GC lead, still 25 seconds ahead of Vauquelin but the entire top 10 is now much closer. Almeida moved up 11 spots to 7th, 2 minutes 7 seconds down and seems to be the leader in waiting but he has a number of quality GC guys in front of him that he'll have to crack in the coming days to make the overall win a reality.