DISCUSSION Tour de Suisse Stage 7 | Is João Almeida favourite over Kévin Vauquelin to win the final GC?

The penultimate stage of the Tour de Suisse didn’t have a difficult start, but the hardest part of the day was mostly concentrated in the final kilometres.

A high quality breakaway was established, in line with the previous stages. Super combative and former winner Quinn Simmons, Aleksandr Vlasov and Frank van den Broek were the main riders present.

It wasn’t hard for the peloton to control the break due to the absence of climbs in the first half of the day, and the group in front never had an option to substantially increase their lead.

UAE paced most of the day to help João Almeida fight for the win, and in the penultimate climb, he went clear with four other men: Kévin Vauquelin, Oscar Onley, Julian Alaphilippe and Felix Gall. The latter tried to went solo, but the other four riders caught him soon afterwards.

They stayed together until the final climb, in which Vauquelin launched an explosive attack with under 1km to go and broke the group. Almeida didn’t give up, caught him in the final 50 meters, and outsprinted Oscar Onley. The Portuguese is now second in the GC 33 seconds behind Vauquelin with one stage remaining, while Alaphilippe is still holding on to the third place.

Once the stage finished, we asked some of our writers to share their thoughts and main takeaways about what happened today.

A nice stage, another one with the action kicking off early as the strongest climbers tried to make the difference and prevent those who are most explosive from taking the win. Ultimately the plan did not work as neither Gall or Almeida managed to gain time on the road to their main rivals, but their work and Picnic PostNL's tactics made it a very very hard finale.

Vauquelin defended himself perfectly and goes into the final day in yellow but 33 seconds shouldn't be enough to hold off Almeida who is the strongest climber in the race and the climb is simply brutal - those differences are not big. I do believe Almeida will win the overall classification after once again showing he's the strongest climber in the race.

Well, João Almeida once again confirming he's the strongest on the Tour de Suisse. I think Vauquelin did a good defence but looking at his state after crossing the finish line you can notice quite easily that he was on his absolute limit while João looked like he finished a bit better.

2 wins, 2 times 2nd place. I think it is clear who is the strongest at this moment and i think the 33 seconds are on reach for him to win the Tour de Suisse.

33 seconds mean nothing in a time trial like tomorrow's. If you're heading toward a Swiss Hütte, you know exactly what time it is. Kevin Vauquelin will need climbing gear just to survive — so rule him out. Almeida has nothing to gain, only something to lose. In my eyes, he’s already won the 2025 Tour de Suisse. But oh, how long we waited for that uphill time trial. We morphed into Joao Almeida ourselves. Finally, it's there.

The Tour de Suisse has once again given us a great stage with a victory for Joao Almeida. The Portuguese rider proved to be the smartest of the class on the final climb, when Kevin Vauquelin attacked to reinforce the yellow jersey before the final time trial.

The Frenchman made his move with 300 metres to go, and Almeida waited for him to run out of gas before overtaking him in the final 10-20 metres.

UAE also did a great job during the stage. Almeida's team was in charge of keeping at bay the breakaway of Vlasov, Benoot, Simmons and company, so that they had no chance and Almeida could finish the stage taking those 4 seconds of bonus over Vauquelin.

Anything less than an overall victory for Joao Almeida in the time trial, after all we have seen this beautiful week of cycling, will seem to me to be a failure on his part. But something tells me that won't happen.

João Almeida continues to cut seconds in the Tour de Suisse, but how well Kévin Vauquelin is holding on. We must also praise the performance of Oscar Onley and Felix Gall. The Briton is one of the great hopes of his country's cycling for the big races and he continues to prove it.

On the Spanish side, Pablo Castrillo holds his Top 10 and is giving the best performance of his career considering the level and prestige of the race. While his Movistar Team teammate Will Barta has moved up to 12th and should hold his own in the time trial.

The time trial will be more decisive than ever. The top three (Vauquelin, Almeida and Julian Alaphilippe) are within 41 seconds. All remains to be seen. It will be a climb that will mark the podium order of this Tour de Suisse 2025.

The fifth stage had already shown us who are the strongest riders of this edition, so today’s outcome shouldn’t come as a surprise. Almeida, Onley, Vauquelin, Gall and Alaphilippe are the five strongest riders, and they will all deservedly finish in the top 5.

João Almeida has become much more explosive this year, that is something to note. He already won the group sprint in the third stage to riders such as Romain Grégoire, and today he outsprinted everyone again. And it wasn’t an easy sprint, because Vauquelin tried to surprise from very far away, so it was a very long effort.

Oscar Onley and Felix Gall look in great shape and totally ready for the Tour de France. Not sure if they will target the GC, but if they don’t, they will have a great shot to get stage wins in the mountains.

Last year, both Almeida and Vauquelin were present at the Tour de Suisse and tackled a very similar uphill individual time trial in the last stage (5km longer than this year). Almeida won that one and was over 2 minutes faster than Vauquelin. I don’t think the gap will be that big tomorrow, but I think it will be around 1 minute. Vauquelin saving the yellow jersey would be a huge feat for him on the one hand, and a worrying sign for Almeida on the other. But after the legs the Portuguese has shown these days, I don’t think that will happen.

UAE has forgotten their internal chaos of the first stages and have been working as a team recently. Today they have been working for most of the stage to make sure the break didn’t go away and help Almeida fight for the victory, and their hard work paid off. They are already very dominant in mountainous races even if there is not good teamwork, so when there is, they are almost unstoppable. Almeida proved it and secured his 20th professional win. Tomorrow they will be 22.

Special note about Lennard Kämna, the German seems to be back after the horrific crash he had in 2024, when he was hit by a car on a descent while training. That’s always great news, not every rider going through the same situation has been able to come back to a top shape. Take the example of Chris Froome, he has been invisible since that crash at Dauphiné, and that happened in 2019…