June 20, 2026
After a near miss for the sprinters in Bad Ragaz, the race moves out of the canton St. Gallen and into Aargau and Solothurn for a 23.7 km ITT that straddles the two regions. The course is one for the pure time trialists with just a few lumps on the counter clock-wise course. The visuals should be beautiful with the start and finish along the Aare River, under the shadow of the Schloss Aarburg, and a trip out into the country side through Neuendorf and Murganthal in between. In terms of the sporting aspect, the top three spots in GC are likely safe from change today. Fourth through fourteenth however could be a game of chutes and ladders with less than 1 minute separating those riders. Brandon McNulty, Alec Segaert, and Tobias Foss are really the only pure time trial specialists remaining in the field so we could see the GC riders also throw their hat in for a possible stage win.
Race Summary
The heat did not abate after the storm yesterday and when the first riders came off the ramp, the sun was beating in, pushing the temperature to 33 C (92F). Arthur Kluckers of Tudor Pro Cycling held the hot seat for a time but it was the German, Nils Politt of UAE-XRG, who set the fastest early benchmark. His time of 27 minutes 21 seconds was good enough to hold off Alec Segaert of Bahrain Victorious who came in fractions of a second slower to sit provisionally in second place.
Out on course, Politt's teammate, Tim Wellens, was lighting up the intermediate checks. By the finish, Wellens took over the lead by 31 seconds to confirm his return to form after a Spring beset by injury. The Belgian would not stay in the hot seat for long however because there was a flying Dutchman out on course. Mathieu van der Poel of Alpecin-Premier Tech came to the Tour de Suisse with no real opportunity for a stage win but with the Tour de France on the horizon, he decided to go full in the time trial. Van der Poel set the fastest time at the intermediate check and carried his speed through the second half of the course to finish 11 seconds quicker than Wellens.
Van der Poel's intermediate time stood until fifth overall, Mathias Vacek of Lidl-Trek went through the check point 4 seconds quicker. That time would not hold for long because race leader Tadej Pogačar of UAE-XRG had nearly caught Richard Carapaz of EF-Education EasyPost for 1 minute after just 10 km and reached the time check 0.7 seconds faster than Vacek. When Vacek came to the finish line, he had lost 14 seconds in the second half to provisionally finish second at 10 seconds. The last man on course to challenge for the stage win was Pogačar. Into the last kilometer, he had 65 seconds to finish which was going to be very tight. Pogačar railed the last two corners over the river and sprinted the final 200 meters to the line. When he crossed, the time was .31 seconds quicker than van der Poel, denying the Dutch rider his first professional ITT victory. After the stage, the official time keepers went back to validate the times given the stakes of the situation and they revised it to just 0.04 seconds which made it that much more heartbreaking for van der Poel. Pogačar's average speed across the course was 53.392 km/hr which will give him confidence for the Stage 16 ITT in the Tour over almost identical distance. We did not get many images of other riders, but former World ITT Champion, Tobias Foss of Netcompany-Ineos, rode a strong second part of the time trial to knock off Vack for third place, finishing 7 down.