Tour de Suisse 2025 Stage 7

June 21, 2025 The last road stage is the longest road stage of this Tour de Suisse at 207KM. Starting in yesterday's finish town of Neuhausen am Rheinfall in the canton of Schaffhausen, the riders head South, around Lake Zurich, to find the first categorized climb of the day. Schwändi is 3KM long at just under 9% but it comes 95KM before the finish so it should just act as a softening up. The Tissot Sprint Kilometer is 11KM down the road in Schwyzerbrugg before a 14KM descent into Goldau and Küssnacht, retracing their steps from Stage 1. The riders continue around the South side of Lake Lucerne to go up Bürgenstock, a category 2 climb that is 5.5KM long at 8%. The Bürgenstock tops out 18KM from the finish but the climbing isn't done yet. The riders enter Ennetbürgen off the descent of Bürgenstock and head into Beckenreid to start the final climb to Emmetten, a 4KM climb at just over 8%. Another stunning weather day was forecasted for the riders as they set off with Europe's largest waterfall over their right shoulder. An early crash for Matthew Riccitello of Israel-Premier Tech saw the American, who was sitting in ninth overall at the start of the day, climb off and abandon the stage. A group of seven eventually got away to make the early break including Quinn Simmons of Lidl-Trek, Tiesj Benoot of Visma-Lease a Bike, Mountains Classification leader Aleksandr Vlasov of Redbull-Bora Hansgrohe, Hugo Houle of Israel-Premier Tech, Felix Engelhardt of Jayco AlUla, William Junior Lecerf of Soudal Quickstep, and Frank van den Broek of Picnic-PostNL. They had 2 minutes 30 seconds with 72KM to go as they were descending towards Goldau. UAE-XRG and Tudor Pro Cycling were chasing together in the peloton and they hard to work quite hard given the strength up front. The faces of Mikkel Bjerg, Julius Johansen, and Vegard Stake Laengen of UAE-XRG as well as Marco Haller of Tudor Pro Cycling were contorted in pain as they pushed the pedals, drawing the gap down to 1 minute 20 seconds through Küssnacht with 48KM to go. The riders were greeted to enormous crowds through Luzern as they crossed over the lake on the modern bridge running parallel to the famous wooden Kapellbrücke. At the start of the Bürgenstock, Simmons went solo right from the bottom of the climb but Tudor Pro Cycling were drilling the pace behind. Decathlon AG2R took over just like in Stage 5 with Callum Scotson leading the way for Felix Gall. When Scotson pulled off with 3.5KM to climb, Felix Gall attacked with Kévin Vauquelin of Arkéa-B&B Hotels and Oscar Onley of Picnic-PostNL on his wheel. João Almeida of UAE-XRG dragged Julian Alaphilippe of Tudor Pro Cycling up to the other favorites to make five. Simmons was caught 2.3KM from the top and the pace came out slightly which allowed van den Broek from the early break to make it up to the front group. Van den Broek immediately went to the front to set a pace for Onley. At the top with 17KM to go, Simmons dropped back to help his team leader, Lennard Kämna, who was chasing in a dropped group about 25 seconds behind. The six leaders went over the top with stunning, unobstructed views across Lake Lucerne. Van den Broek drove the front group the entire way to the base of the final climb, finally pulling off after an immense effort. Almeida played his card by setting the pace and forcing the others to follow if they can. Gall was the first attacker and got 5 seconds after about 1KM of climbing. Almeida and Onley swapped turns on the climb but it was Almeida that did the lion's share of the work, bringing Gall back at 1100M from the line. Alaphilippe lost contact at that point but kept fighting just 3 seconds off the back. A slow down with 700M to go allowed Alaphilippe to get back on and they continued to play games until Vauquelin made an all or nothing attack with 400M to go. Onley and Almeida reacted but they had 10 bikes lengths to close. It looked like Vauquelin might hold on but Almeida made a surge with 100M to go and passed Vauquelin just 25M from the line to take the victory. Onley snuck passed the Frenchman on the line to take second place with Vauquelin in third. Gall lost 4 seconds and Alaphilippe lost 8 seconds in the sprint, rolling across in fourth and fifth place respectively. The organizers couldn't have asked for a more interesting GC picture going into the final day's uphill ITT tomorrow. Vauquelin now leads by 33 seconds to Almeida and 41 seconds to Alaphilippe. Onley is likely out of the picture at 1 minute 19 seconds but anything can happen in bike racing.