Another day, another demonstration. While Tadej Pogačar prepares for the Tour de France at altitude at Isola 2000, the key members of his supporting cast continued their dominance at the Tour de Suisse on the shortened stage 6 to Blatten.
For the second consecutive afternoon, UAE Team Emirates claimed the first two places, tightening their grip on the general classification. After taking second behind his teammate Adam Yates to victory at Carì on Thursday, João Almeida helped himself to the win on Friday’s 42km. Yates came across the line four seconds later to retain the yellow jersey.
In the overall standings, Yates’ lead over Almeida is now down to 28 seconds, but the UAE pair have extended their buffer over everybody else. Egan Bernal (Ineos), third at 1:28, is the only rider within two minutes as the race enters its final weekend.
Almeida had highlighted his strength on Carì on stage 5 when he teed up Yates’ winning move before catching and passing Bernal and Enric Mas in the final kilometre to take second place on the stage.
Friday’s finale at Blatten followed a similar pattern, with Yates attacking with 3.5km to go and opening a small gap. After sitting on Bernal et al, Almeida bridged across to Yates in the final kilometre and he later pulled clear of his teammate to win the stage by four seconds.
“We anticipated that Ineos would put up the pace, but we wanted the pace a bit higher, so we had the guys pulling, [Jan] Christen and [Isaac] Del Toro, and then Adam went, but maybe from a bit too far. I was on the wheels, but I felt good, so I bridged to Adam. From there, we were both pulling, and I crossed the line first.”
Almeida’s analysis was echoed by Yates, who acknowledged that his attack might have been a touch too hasty.
“Maybe I went a bit too early on the climb, but I felt pretty good,” Yates said. “At the end, João came across to me and he managed to drop me. It was another strong performance from the team.
"We always knew from the beginning it would be a good race for both of us and we've shown that in the past few days. We’re both in good shape and we're both fighting for the win. It's super nice for the team to be in this position."
Last week, it was announced that Friday’s stage would be severely reduced in length as both the Nufenen and Furka Passes were unpassable. Although Almeida has built a reputation over the years for his qualities as a diesel, he proved the strongest on the 42km stage.
“I think it was one of the shortest stages I ever did and it was quite explosive but luckily I did well,” said Almeida.
Yates was enthusiastic about the novel format. “It’s quite good to do something different,” he said. “It doesn’t always have to be 200k. It was quite fun.”
With two stages of the Tour de Suisse remaining, the battle for overall victory looks set to be an in-house affair between Yates and Almeida. The Portuguese rider was the stronger on Friday and he should also be favoured by Sunday’s concluding time trial, but the penultimate stage over the Col de la Croix might change the lie of the land.
“It’s the queen stage,” Yates said. “It’s only down or up, there’s no valley. Yesterday, we got quite organised in the valley before the last climb, whereas tomorrow it will be trickier to do that.”
Almeida acknowledged that the final time trial played to his strengths, though he stressed that securing victory for the team was the priority over their personal ambitions. “As long as we do first and second, and it doesn’t matter who, then I think we’re both happy,” said Almeida.
After riding the Giro d’Italia in each of his first four seasons as a professional, Almeida is set to make his Tour de France debut this year in the service of Pogačar, with Yates and Pavel Sivakov also set to feature in an all-star line-up. As things stand, and in keeping with UAE's plan since the winter, none of the riders who helped Pogačar to Giro d'Italia victory last month are expected to line out alongside him at the Tour.
Almeida had a relatively subdued start to 2024, but he appears to be hitting his stride on the eve of the main event.
“I’ve been working quite a lot,” he said. “It was a rough start to the year, I was sick and I had to work to get the shape back.”
