Tour of Switzerland 2024, the big ranking: the UAE also dominates in the sixth stage, Almeida wins in Blatten and recovers a few seconds in Yates

There were immediate gaps in the general classification in the first stage of the Tour of Switzerland 2024. Opening with a short time trial, the Swiss race obviously showed the first differences between the big names in the race, among which the best turned out to be the Portuguese João Almeida (UAE Team Emirates), who finished in fourth place in the race won by Yves Lampaert (Soudal-QuickStep). The 25-year-old gained 4″ on the defending champion Mattias Skjelmose (Lidl-Trek), who finished with the same time as Wilco Kelderman (Visma | Lease a Bike), while his teammate Adam Yates he finished 8″ behind the Kazakh Alexey Lutsenko (Astana Qazaqstan).

Between 10″ and 16″ behind Almeida came riders like Tom Pidcock (Ineos Grenadiers), Egan Bernal (Ineos Grenadiers), Lenny Martinez (Groupama-FDJ), Enric Mas (Movistar), Ion Izagirre (Cofidis), Richard Carapaz (EF Education-EasyPost), Sergio Higuita (Bora-hansgrohe) e Cian Uijtdebroeks (Visma | Lease a Bike), but in general almost all the men in the classification kept the gap from the Portuguese within 20″. They are exceptions Einer Rubio (Movistar), Emanuel Buchmann (Bora-hansgrohe) and, above all, the talented Isaac Del Toro (UAE Team Emirates), who lost 49″ from the winner of the day and 42″ from his teammate due to a fall after taking the wrong path.

The second day sees gaps eliminated between almost everyone, with the leading positions therefore remaining unchanged, but some men lose contact and drop out of the rankings. Among these stand out Damiano Caruso (Bahrain Victorious) and Nairo Quintana (Movistar), for whom the delay reaches almost three minutes. The eventful finale of the third stage rewards Thibau Nys, stage winner, and Alberto Bettiol, new leader, but also Adam Yates (UAE Team Emirates), the only one to finish with the time of the leaders, thus managing to make some hay in the farm compared to all the others, with the gaps still very small for many. For some, however, the gap is starting to become significant, for example Felix Gall (Decathlon Ag2r La Difesa), who is more than 40 seconds behind the current leader.

The first uphill finish sees Yates ahead of everyone and taking the symbol of the record with a 26″ advantage over teammate Almeida and Skjelmose, who lost 25″ to the Briton in the San Gottardo finish. Instead, Bernal rises to fourth place in the general classification, the only other big name to contain the delay from Yates within a minute, both for the stage and for the general classification, while Mas, Gall, Uijtdebroeks and Oscar Onley (Team dsm-firmenich PostNL). Riders like Martinez, Higuita, Pidcock and, above all, Carapaz finish with a greater delay, who gives up almost 2′ after having also fallen during the day, even if it is Izagirre and Lutsenko who pay the heaviest losses, losing more than 14′.

UAE Team Emirates once again showcased itself in the fifth stage, with the second success of Adam Yates who won solo while behind him it was his teammate Joao Almeida who took second position, arriving alone after recovering and overtaking in a comeback Egan Bernal and Enric Mas, with the Spaniard then overtaken at the finish line also by an excellent one Matthew Riccitello (Israel-Premier Tech). Gall, Uijtdebroeks and, above all, Skjelmose, who lost almost two minutes, including bonuses, were decidedly further away today. The very short sixth stage, of just 42.5 kilometres, sees another UAE domination in the uphill finish in Blatten, even if the winner on this day is Almeida, with the Portuguese also overtaking his teammate Yates in the last hundreds of meters and in the standings he is close to 27″ behind the Briton in the Yellow Jersey.

Bernal, however, confirmed himself in third place after his fourth place of the day, surpassed only by a more brilliant Skjelmose compared to the previous day, who recovered two positions in the standings and moved into fourth place. Gall and also gain positions and enter the top-10 Pelayo Sanchez (Movistar), both in the top ten of the stage, while the ones who dropped out were Higuita, who lost 1’45”, and Uijtdebroeks, who lost 3’29” after breaking away shortly after the start of the final climb.

Big Tour of Switzerland 2024 ranking