Race thread: ๐จ๐ญ Tour of Switzerland (M&W) 2026, June 17โ21
(www.tourdesuisse.ch)
6
It is becoming more and more difficult to organise races in Switzerland: acceptation by populations/authorities, exploding costs, introduction of women races... In Romandie, they cancelled the women race; here, it is the men race which suffers: from 8 days last years (and even 9 a few years ago) it is now reduced to 5 days (only 4 in Switzerland as the 1^st^ one take place entirely in Italy), the total distance is divided by 2, and all stages are circuits, or more exactly loops, only the last one is an actual circuit.
The women stages are in the mornings, the men races in the afternoon.
Riders (men)
Pogatchar (๐ธ๐ฎ UAE) continues his mission, coming on races he hasn't already won to fix this mistake. There won't be much competition for General Classification, as Pidcock cancelled his participation: L. Martinez (๐ซ๐ท Bahrain), M. Schmid (๐จ๐ญ Jayco), Roglitch (๐ธ๐ฎ Bora), and perhaps Riccitello (๐บ๐ธ Decathlon) or Tiberi (๐ฎ๐น Bahrain) if they finally feel better. We may get interested in what the 3^rd^ Bahrain rider, Eulalio๐ต๐น, can do here after his great Tour of Italy.
There will be a greater competition among punchers. In addition to some puncher-climbers I already quoted, we shall see Van der Poel (๐ณ๐ฑ Alpecin), Grรฉgoire (๐ซ๐ท FDJ), Narvaez (๐ช๐จ UAE) and others.
Stages
Not a single one reaches 160 km...
Stage 1, Wednesday 17, the Sondrio loop
A punchers' stage going back and forth in an Italian valley.
Stage 2, Thursday 18, the Locarno loop
A pure punchers' stage.
Stage 3, Friday 19, the Bad Ragaz loop
The sprinters' stage, unless a few teams want to make their life hard in the first half of the stage. After all, this stage presents basically as much elevation as the first two stages.
Stage 4, Saturday 20, the AArburg loop
The Individual Time Trial, very much flat, 24 km.
Stage 5, Sunday 21, the Villars/Ollon circuit
This final stage is a hard mountain stage. A climb of almost 20 km (!) is repeated 3 times with 0 flat in between: you go up by one road, you go down by another road which ends directly where the first one restarts, and so on. The start/finish point is not on top nor at the bottom, but at about 2/3 of the climb, which mean the departure starts with a 4 km climb at 9 %. ๐ฑ
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this post was submitted on 16 Jun 2026
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Stage 1, Wednesday 17, the Sondrio loop
๐คฃ, day #1 and Pogatchar๐ธ๐ฎ takes the time bonuses at Intermediate Sprints and attacks with more than 70 km to go...
Oh dear, it was a butchery. All the favourites I had picked in my presentation are gone ๐
Beside (and far behind) the Slovenian mutant, only Carapaz (๐ช๐จ EF) and Bagioli (๐ฎ๐น Lidl-Trek) produced rather impressive performances. The Italian would have closed the 1mn30 gap with the Ecuadorian who had gone away much earlier, if there hadn't been that last short but very steep climb which allowed Carapaz๐ช๐จ to gain again 15-20 seconds, enough to finish 2^nd^.
Coming back to my wonderful expertise:
Only Roglitch (๐ธ๐ฎ Bora) and Riccitello (๐บ๐ธ Decathlon) didn't do too bad, without doing particularly well either: in the second group at 4โฒ30โณ (the Slovenian a little bit behind, dropped in the finish). They can both aim for top-10 or even top-5.