Tour de Suisse 2025 Stage 6

June 20, 2025 The race moves away from the Alps and back into Central Switzerland with a brief incursion into Liechtenstein along the way. There is 2,200M of elevation over the 187KM of racing but most comes within the first half of the stage. There are no categorized climbs in the final 100KM but the road does roll up and down in typical Suisse fashion. The day could either be a break or a sprint but it all depends on how much resource the few sprint teams have left to deploy to control. The finale in Neuhausen am Rheinfall, home of the largest waterfall in Europe, is straightforward with only gradual turns within the last 5KM so if it does come to a sprint, it should be relatively safe. A powerful break got away that included previous race leader Romain Grégoire and local man Stefan Küng of Groupama-FDJ, Harry Sweeny of EF-Education EasyPost, and Mauro Schmid of Jayco AlUla. A group of three counter attackers were stuck in the middle between the leaders and the peloton, the group contained Ewen Costiou of Arkéa-B&B Hotels, and Matej Mohorič and Pello Bilbao of Bahrain Victorious. With 91KM to go, the leaders had 2 minutes 15 seconds on the bunch and 1 minute 20 seconds on the chase group. Q36.5 were leading the peloton and caught Costiou, Mohorič, and Bilbao with 85KM to go leaving just the four leaders out in front. Lotto, Picnic-PostNL, and Redbull-Bora Hansgrohe all pitched in to the chase and with 62KM to go, they had the break within 90 seconds. The bunch put a lot of pressure on the break and they were forced to up their effort. Grégoire sacrificed his chances for Küng and buried himself. He pulled off with 44KM to go to leave three leaders up the road, still with just 90 seconds. Alpecin-Deceuninck added a man to the chase and had the gap to below 1 minute with 31KM to race. Küng and his breakaway companions were putting up a strong fight but the concentration was momentarily broken when Küng gave a waive and a kiss to his family on the side of the road before putting his head down and getting back to work. At 20KM to go through the town of Oberstammheim, the gap was down to 38 seconds as more and more resources were being piled into the chase. The arm wrestling continued and with 5KM to go, the gap was down to 15 seconds but there was no loss of commitment from anyone in the break. The connection was finally made just under 1KM to go but with all of the frantic chasing over the last 60KM, the bunch was a disorganized mess with no lead outs able to form. Lotto looked to have a good position for Arnaud De Lie in the last 400M but a rush from Redbull-Bora Hansgrohe on the left side propelled them to the front. Danny van Poppel led Jordi Meeus perfectly into the last 150M and all Meeus had to do was a 10 second sprint and he had the victory in the bag. Davide Ballerini of XDS-Astana was next best with Lewis Askey of Groupama-FDJ taking third. Van Poppel's lead out was so good that he managed to hold on for sixth place.