PREVIEW | Tour de Suisse 2025 stage 3 - Anonther hilltop finish can change GC outcome

From the 15th to 22nd of June the World Tour peloton will tackle the Tour de Suisse, one of the hardest races in the calendar and the last of the 'big 7' one-week stage-races in the calendar. We preview stage 3.

Another typical Swiss day, with the hilltop finish in Heiden providing opportunity for the puncheurs and climbers to fight for the win whilst the GC fight and bonifications will be in the mind of many during the day. It will be a similar finale to that of stage 2, likely we will also have a similar outcome.

3000 meters of climbing in a day that from afar doesn't look that difficult. The first half is not indeed, but the rolling roads intensify quite a lot in the final half. And we'll have a combination of short efforts that will weight on the legs of many. But it's a more difficult finale than the previous.

There is a 5.2-kilometer long climb at 6.2% that ends with 17Km to go; immediately after a steep descent another 2 kilometers at 6.9% (they end with 10 kilometers to go... And all of this must be paced carefully as there is actually no descent afterwards, just a plateau section into the final ascent.

The climb into Heiden is not brutal, but hard enough for some action and potential gaps. It's 3.4 kilometers long at 5.3% which, with this difficult finale and likely a stage win/bonifications present at the line, will see an all-out effort from the GC favourites.

*** Vincenzo Albanese, Romain Grégoire
** Marc Hirschi, Quinn Simmons, Clément Champoussin, Julian Alaphilippe
* Kévin Vauquelin, Oscar Onley, João Almeida, Michael Woods, Jan Christen, Andrea Bagioli, Fabio Christen, Paul Lapeira, Stefano Oldani

Pick: Romain Grégoire

How: Sprint finish