On the eve of an extremely demanding uphill time trial, which will determine the overall winner of the Tour de Suisse, the seventh stage caused further damage on Saturday. In the very hilly final to Emmetten, the GC contenders took the opportunity to fight once again, and Romain Grégoire tried to limit his losses as best he could despite an already grueling week. Heading into the final stage, the rider from Besançon sits seventeenth overall.
For the penultimate stage of the Tour de Suisse, the peloton had to tackle the week’s longest route on Saturday, with 207 kilometres between Neuhausen am Rheinfall and Emmetten. In addition, 3,500 metres of elevation gain were again on the meny, with the “cronoscalata” waiting for them on Sunday. Now out of contention in GC, Groupama-FDJ approached the day with a clear goal. “Today, the strategy was to go all in for Valentin, for him to produce the best possible stage,” explained William Green. “The final was quite hilly with these two climbs, and the first part of the race was also hilly, which was suitable for him to move into a strong breakaway. The plan was for him to be there with Lewis or Stefan to help him in the flat sections and give him the best chance of getting a result.” However, the right move emerged after about forty kilometres of racing without the former French champion. “There was a fight for a very long time at the start,” said William. “The front peloton was actually made up of forty-five riders at one point, with Stefan and Valentin. Then, a group of eighteen went away, we were represented with Stefan, but the good move went right after that. We followed quite a lot of moves by that point, and this solid group went clear.”
“We weren’t really thinking about the overall,” William Green
At the front, seven men, including Quinn Simmons, Aleksandr Vlasov, and Tiesj Benoot, led the way and gained up to three minutes. However, the peloton increased the pace significantly before the final two climbs, which the breakaway tackled with just a minute’s lead. The GC fight was then ready to take place. “We knew it was going to be hard for Romain today, and we weren’t really thinking about the overall at first,” William added. “However, after Riccitello’s abandon halfway through the race, Romain was twelfth overall, and there were seven seconds on eleventh and thirty-seven seconds on tenth. We told him, ‘If you feel ok, there’s an opportunity to go for the top-10. Like the whole peloton, he wasn’t feeling super, we still tried to do the placement before the first climb, but it became very clear that it wasn’t going to be a feasible option to fight for the top 10.” The winner of the first stage struggled with the strong tempo from the first ramps, but still fought hard to reach the line in 35th position, nine minutes behind the winner Joao Almeida. “Honestly, between seventeenth or thirteenth overall isn’t really important after the successful week we’ve had,” concluded William. “There’s still the time trial tomorrow, but it’s going to be difficult just to make it up this climb, so we’ll see what the day brings us.”
