Jo\u00e3o Almeida swept to a memorable long-distance solo victory on stage four of the Tour de Suisse to Piuro (Valchiavenna).<\/p>\n
On a sweltering day, the UAE Team Emirates-XRG rider rode away from the front group on the day’s only major climb, and held off his pursuers for 49km to take a 40-second win.<\/p>\n
Romain Gr\u00e9goire (Groupama-FDJ) \u2013 one of those chasing down Almeida in the second group \u2013 held on to his yellow jersey after losing a minute in total.<\/p>\n
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Portuguese rider Almeida may have benefited from a lack of consistent commitment in the chasing group, but one of its number, Felix Gall (Decathlon-AG2R La Mondiale) said afterwards, “I don’t know if it would have made a difference, he was very strong.”<\/p>\n
The chase group was led in by Oscar Onley (Picnic PostNL), who climbed 11 places into the GC top-10 \u2013 same as Almeida, who climbed from 18th place to 7th.<\/p>\n
Other GC hopefuls also made inroads on Gr\u00e9goire’s lead, including Ben O’Connor (Decathlon-AG2R La Mondiale), who gained 22 seconds a moved up to fourth.<\/p>\n
Afterwards a relaxed but rather taciturn Almeida said he was happy with the win, and that he would continue the pursuit of yellow.<\/p>\n
Asked how much he suffered, he replied. “Too much for sure. It was a hard effort. Good team-work, it was nice to finish it off.<\/p>\n
“There’s still a long way to go,” he said, in regard to the GC. “It’s a lot of time to get back but I’m happy with the stage win \u2013 we’re going to enjoy this one.”<\/p>\n
Asked whether he ought to now be considered the GC favourite, he said: “I have to disagree, as it’s up to me to take back [the time] and it’s going to be a super-hard task.But yeah, we never give up.”<\/p>\n
Tomorrow’s stage to Santa Maria in Calanca included four cat-one climbs, including the summit finish, and is set to be one of the hardest in the race. Asked whether he would be continuing to take time, Almeida said: “Well we have to try, if we don’t try we’ll never know.”<\/p>\n
How it happened<\/p>\n
This was a 193km due-south Alpine trek that took them, ultimately over the Italian border. Starting at yesterday’s stage finish town of Heiden, and culminating in Piuro, Lombardy.<\/p>\n
With a full 47km from the crest of the one major climb of the Spl\u00fcgenpass, the stage looked for all the world as though it could just as easily be a breakaway day as a one for the GC.<\/p>\n
However, it was only with a number of fits and starts that a breakaway was finally established \u2013 halfway to the foot of the mountain \u2013 by the trio of Andrew August (Ineos Grenadiers), Georg Zimmerman and Tudor’s Larry Warbasse.<\/p>\n
They were joined a short while later by five more riders, swelling the group to eight \u2013<\/p>\n
Nielson Powless (EF Education-EasyPost), Quinn Simmons (Lidl-Trek), Thomas Gloag (Visma-Lease a Bike), S\u00e9bastian Grignard (Lotto) and Warbasse’s Tudor team-mate Marius Mayrhofer.<\/p>\n
It was a useful bunch, but the GC riders behind \u2013 especially Almeida and his UAE Team Emirates-XRG team \u2013 weren’t in the mood to let them run free, and they were absorbed in dribs and drabs on the slopes of the Spl\u00fcgenpass.<\/p>\n
This set up Almeida perfectly and with a little help from 20-year-old team-mate Jan Christen, he upped the pace to breaking point before, with little fanfare, riding the final stragglers off his back wheel 2km before the summit.<\/p>\n
He wasn’t seen again until the finish.<\/p>\n
ResultsTour de Suisse 2025, stage four, Heiden > Piuro (Valchiavenna)<\/p>\n
1. Jo\u0101o Almeida (Por) UAE Team Emirates-XRG, in 4:10:19
2. Oscar Onley (GBr) Picnic PostNL, +40s
3. Ben O’Connor (Aus) Decathlon-AG2R La Mondiale, +42s
4. K\u00e9vin Vauquelin (Fra) Ark\u00e9a-B&B Hotels, +1:00
5. Romain Gr\u00e9goire (Fra) Groupama-FDJ
6. Felix Gall (Aut) Decathlon-AG2R La Mondiale, both s.t.
7. Ilan Van Wilder (Bel) Soudal-Quick Step, +1:02
8. Cl\u00e9ment Champoussin (Fra) XDS-Astana
9. Julian Alaphilippe (Fra) Tudor
10. Lennard K\u00e4mna (Ger) Lidl-Trek, all s.t.<\/p>\n
General classification<\/p>\n
1. Romain Gr\u00e9goire (Fra) Groupama-FDJ, in 15:37:20
2. K\u00e9vin Vauquelin (Fra) Arkea-B&B Hotels, +25s
3. Julian Alaphilippe (Fra) Tudor Pro Cycling, +29s
4. Ben O’Connor (Aus) Jayco AlUla, +56s
5. Lennard K\u00e4mna (Ger) Lidl-Trek, +1:20
6. Pablo Castrillo (Esp) Movistar Team, at s.t.
7. Jo\u0101o Almeida (Por) UAE Team Emirates-XRG, +2:07
8. Oscar Onley (GBr) Picnic PostNL, +2:53
9. Felix Gall (Aut) Decathlon-AG2R La Mondiale, +3:23
10. Cl\u00e9ment Champoussin (Fra) XDS-Astana, +3:25<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jo\u00e3o Almeida swept to a memorable long-distance solo victory on stage four of the Tour de Suisse to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":194857,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4104],"tags":[4230,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-194856","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cycling","8":"tag-cycling","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114705346302352009","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194856","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=194856"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194856\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/194857"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=194856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=194856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=194856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}