He was obviously starting to get used to it, but on Thursday, Romain Grégoire couldn’t retain his yellow jersey as leader of the Tour de Suisse. On stage 5, the hardest of the week on paper, the French rider really suffered on the day’s final two climbs. After joining the finish seven minutes behind winner Oscar Onley, despite a hard fight and Valentin Madouas’ support, the young man dropped to thirteenth overall. However, great opportunities will be up for grabs on the next two days for the Groupama-FDJ cycling team.
Two passes peaking at over 2,000 metres of altitude, nearly 4,000 metres of elevation gain, and a summit finish. There was no doubt about it; the riders were set to face the queen stage of the 2025 Tour de Suisse this Thursday. Romain Grégoire, holding the yellow jersey since Sunday, was preparing to tackle another major challenge, and this was confirmed from the start. “There was a really difficult first climb after sixteen kilometres,” explained William Green. “A group of twelve first got away with Lewis. We wanted to be in the breakaway and anticipate, so that Romain would have support later on. It eventually came back, and on the climb, a group went clear with some top climbers, including Vlasov, Bilbao, and Powless. The race was really in pieces on the first climb, and it took nearly thirty kilometers on the descent for everything to come back together. Then UAE Team Emirates took control straight away, as we expected.” After seventy kilometres, the peloton got over the Passo del San Bernardino (7.5 km at 6%) two minutes behind the breakaway, and around fifty riders still remained in the main group. “Romain was riding at the very front of the bunch on the first two climbs, and everything was going ok until then,” added William.
“Valentin did an incredible job”, William Green
A long descent then brought the riders to the bottom of the Castaneda climb (4.5 km at 10%), which they had to cover twice in the final thirty kilometres. UAE Team Emirates continued to push hard from the first ramps, and about two kilometres from the summit, Romain Grégoire was distanced by his main rivals. “I cracked quite early on the first lap, and I completely ran out of energy,” he explained. “I had nothing left. It wasn’t really harder than I thought, but I didn’t have the legs I’d hoped for. Yesterday, I saved my jersey, but I think I went quite deep to do so. I didn’t have anything left today. From the start of the stage, I felt it wasn’t going to work.” By the time he reached the summit, he was already a minute and a half behind, and was struggling to keep the wheel of his teammate Valentin Madouas. “Valentin did an incredible job,” said William. “In the seven kilometres of flat road before the final climb, he took thirty seconds out of the leading group. At the base of the climb, it was then still possible to maintain a nice GC result. Unfortunately, today wasn’t Romain’s day. He didn’t feel great from the beginning, we kept believing, but he just exploded on the last climb.”
“I was completely dead”, Romain Grégoire
Just a minute behind the favorites before the second climb to Castaneda – two kilometres longer than the previous one -, Romain Grégoire was however unable to get back some ground. “Valentin helped me limit the losses, I thank him for that, but I was left to my own on the final climb, and those percentages don’t lie,” he added. “I couldn’t even maintain a pace I would have maintained in training. I couldn’t do anything, I was completely dead.” Suffering but still fighting on this final climb, Romain Grégoire reached the finish line 6 minutes and 53 seconds behind Oscar Onley and gave away his yellow jersey to Kévin Vauquelin, while dropping to thirteenth place overall. “I knew I wouldn’t keep the jersey, but I was hoping to limit my losses a little more than that,” the young rider said. “The Tour de Suisse is still a success with this stage victory, but I now want to recover and think about what’s next.” “Romain and the whole team showed a lot of respect for the jersey,” William Green concluded. “Now, we have two very exciting stages coming up. Everyone is still smiling and can’t wait to get going tomorrow. We’ll continue with our original objective, which was to target stages. Until today, we hadn’t finished out of the top 5, everyone can’t forget that, and we hope it continues into the next two days.”
