For some, the Tour de Suisse marks the final preparation for the Tour de France. For others, the eight-day race is a goal in and of itself. As ever, the event attracts one of the deepest fields of the season.
The headline act is Remco Evenepoel, back in action after COVID-19 cut short his Giro d’Italia campaign. The world champion, who is not headed for the Tour de France, will look to lay down an early marker in Sunday’s opening time trial, where a familiar foe might provide some stiff opposition.
Wout van Aert is making his Tour de Suisse debut this year as he builds towards July, but the Belgian might also be minded to test himself in the mountains across the week. An intriguing contest is in store.
There are, of course, many more subplot to the Tour de Suisse, and a wide range of contenders both for the overall title and for stage wins along the way. Ahead of the race, Cyclingnews takes a look at the ten riders to watch at the Tour de Suisse.
Remco Evenepoel (Soudal-QuickStep)
Remco Evenepoel was in the overall lead of the Giro d'Italia after a week until COVID-19 took him out of the race, and who knows what might have happened had that misfortune not struck. Winning the Tour de Suisse will never exorcise those particular demons, but Evenepoel will look to prove a point all the same.
Evenepoel has not raced since winning the time trial on stage 9 of the Giro on May 14, with the added complication of recovering from COVID-19, plus the need to plot an upwards trajectory for his main objectives later in the summer, so it remains to be seen what sort of form he brings to Switzerland. A monster seven-hour training ride this week would certainly suggest he has laid some decent foundations.
The two time trials that bookend the race look particularly appealing, with Evenepoel having won both the Giro time trials he raced last month, and also looking ahead to the defence of his Belgian national TT crown the week after the finish of Suisse. The mountains in between look like more of an unknown but Evenepoel has the obvious calibre to be up there, and could well have some time to play with thanks to the TTs. He'll start as the favourite.
Wout van Aert (Jumbo-Visma)
Wout van Aert makes his Tour de Suisse debut, marking uncharted territory in his preparations for a fifth Tour de France. In three of the past four seasons, the Belgian has ridden the Critérium du Dauphiné, winning stages and the green jersey each time. However, 2023 has seen a slight shuffle, with Van Aert making his final pre-Tour appearance a week later, and stacking two altitude training camps beforehand. It's a similar trajectory in general, but the tweak might be down to the earlier World Championships, which take place this year just a couple of weeks after the Tour.
The Worlds are a major target of Van Aert's this year and it remains to be seen just how he has tailored his training since his Paris-Roubaix heartbreak closed his Spring campaign in early April. This is a rider, after all, who can do just about anything - often within the same race, as he showed in a 2021 Tour where he won a mountain stage, a bunch sprint, and a time trial.
It's not beyond the realms of possibility to consider Van Aert a contender for the overall title at Suisse, not least because of the 38.4km of time trialling that lines the route. Van Aert has shown in previous Tours that he can climb with the very best, remarkably staying with Jonas Vingegaard and Tadej Pogačar most of the way up to Hautacam last year. Suisse could well give us an indication of whether that sort of mountain domestique display can be expected once again at this year's Tour, or whether Van Aert sacrifices a little climbing ability to focus more on stages, sprints, and of course Worlds.
Then again, it's not like he really has to choose. At the very least, you can expect Van Aert to be in the hunt for stage victories in Switzerland across the two time trials and the sprints.
Tom Pidcock (Ineos Grenadiers)
Another star name on the Tour de Suisse line-up, Tom Pidcock is preparing for his second Tour de France, after lighting up his debut last year with a scintillating stage win up at Alpe d'Huez.
The British rider had a mixed spring, winning Strade Bianche in style and earning podiums at Liège-Bastogne-Liège and Amstel Gold Race, but without the top-level consistency he'd have liked after crashing out of Tirreno-Adriatico with concussion. He hasn't raced since Liège, at least not on the road, with other mountain bike plates still being spun by the multi-disciplinary talent.
Pidcock rode the same programme last year and had to abandon Suisse with COVID-19 but bounced back to play a leading role at the Tour, in which he wore the white jersey for a while and finished 16th overall. The 23-year-old has voiced his ambition to win the Tour one day and while this year may come too soon for a serious GC bid, it could well see him test the waters a little further, even if another stage win would remain the priority.
The two time trials at Suisse could dent any overall hopes here after Pidcock slipped out of the lead on the final TT of the Volta ao Algarve in February, but we should at least get an indication of how he's going ahead of the Tour, and knowing Pidcock, a bit of entertainment along the way.
Peter Sagan (TotalEnergies)
His star may have waned in recent years, but Peter Sagan is still another huge name on the Tour de Suisse start list. The three-time world champion is a great of the sport but also specifically of the Tour de Suisse, as the all-time record stage winner with no fewer than 18 to his name, from 2011 to 2022.
Outside of the Slovakian Championships, Sagan's last win came at Suisse last year, which given he didn't ride in 2020 or 2021, made it at least one win in every participation since 2011. The 33-year-old's win rate has slowed markedly since the pandemic, to the extent that he will call time on his road career at the end of this season.
It's difficult to really back Sagan for top-level wins these days, but if he's going to do it anywhere, it's surely the Tour de Suisse.
Juan Ayuso (UAE Team Emirates)
The Spanish sensation has had a rough start to 2023 after finishing on the podium of the Vuelta a España in his first full season as a pro, but he could move through the gears at the Tour de Suisse.
After battling tendinitis since the start of the year, he only made his debut at the recent Tour de Romandie, but stormed to victory in the stage 3 time trial. He ended up 16th overall after struggling on the Thyon 2000 summit finish, but he had warned that might be the case beforehand, and his week was pretty much a success.
Now more than a month down the line, expectations will rise. The two time trials at Suisse will surely see Ayuso enter the GC fray, while the extra training he has done should help him with that missing endurance for the harder stages. Suisse is a different proposition to Romandie - longer and tougher - but the 20-year-old is the sort of phenomenon who could be back up to speed in no time at all.
Cian Uijtdebroeks (Bora-Hansgrohe)
We've already gone through some of the biggest stars of world cycling of recent years, but there is a deep start list full of less established talents who are perhaps not far away from the upper echelons of the sport.
Cian Uijtdebroeks was once dubbed the 'next Remco Evenepoel', and while he hasn't hit the professional ranks running in quite the same way as his fellow Belgian, he is steadily - but still quickly in old money - stringing together a stronger and stronger set of results.
Aside from the Tour of the Alps, which he left through illness, the 20-year-old has placed top 10 in all three of his stage races so far this year, with 9th at the Tour of Oman and Volta a Catalunya and more recently 6th at the Tour de Romandie.
Sergio Higuita looks set to line up for Bora-Hansgrohe but Uijtdebroeks' progress is certainly worth keeping an eye on.
Ben Tulett (Ineos Grenadiers)
Another young rider who's finding his stride, Ben Tulett heads into the Tour de Suisse looking to test his GC credentials among a world class field. Now in his second season with Ineos, having turned pro as an 18-year-old with Alpecin-Deceuninck in 2020, Tulett has made huge progress in May, winning the Tour of Norway after finishing runner-up behind Marc Hirschi at the Tour de Hongrie.
For a lightweight rider, Tulett is particularly strong against the clock. He won the prologue at the Tour of Norway and if you look back to his Grand Tour debut at last year's Giro d'Italia, he was a highly-impressive fifth place in both time trials.
The Tour de Suisse, then, should suit him with its two time trials, while the mountains will show how much progress he has yet to make as a climber in order to close in on his long-term GC aspirations.
Neilson Powless (EF Education-EasyPost)
Neilson Powless was fourth overall at last year's COVID-attritional Tour de Suisse and will be out for more this year after his best ever start to a season. The US rider won the GP La Marseillaise and Etoile de Bessèges, then made the podium at Tour du Var and placed 6th overall at Paris-Nice. Into the Classics, and he had an even bigger breakthrough as a one-day rider following his 2021 Clásica San Sebastián victory, with 7th at Milan-San Remo and then, in a remarkable cobbles debut, 3rd at Dwars door Vlaanderen and 5th at Tour of Flanders.
The Ardennes didn't go to plan, with two DNFs, but Powless certainly found a new level in the first part of the year and, after a post-Spring break, is picking things back up ahead of the Tour. Last year he was 12th overall at the Grande Boucle, after featuring in numerous breakaways, and a first stage win should be within grasp, while another respectable GC finish is not out of the question, either.
The Tour de Suisse should give us an indication of how his preparation has gone and what US fans can expect from him at the Tour.
Wilco Kelderman (Jumbo-Visma)
The Dutch rider has only done one race this year and didn't even finish it. He crashed out of Tirreno-Adriatico in March and had to be removed from Jumbo-Visma's plans for the Giro d'Italia. He wasn't meant to be in the Tour de France line-up, but after the injuries suffered by Steven Kruijswijk at the Dauphiné, it looks like he's on the plane to Bilbao.
The 32-year-old is a proven GC campaigner, with a Grand Tour podium at the Giro and top-fives at the Tour and Vuelta, although he has had more than a fair share of crashes and misfortune over the years. He would be considered a GC candidate for Suisse ordinarily, but much depends on Jumbo-Visma's plans and his own state of form after so little racing this year.
In that respect, the biggest point of intrigue is not so much Kelderman's own result a week on Sunday, but what his performance says of his Tour de France prospects. The team have the aforementioned Wout van Aert, but the only proper climber on their Tour team is Sepp Kuss, and he did the whole Giro. Vingegaard will need another big rider in the mountains and Suisse should reveal whether Kelderman can step up, and how much of a blow Kruijswijk's absence might be.
Biniam Girmay (Intermarché-Wanty-Gobert)
Biniam Girmay’s Classics campaign ended abruptly with his heavy crash at the Tour of Flanders, but the Eritrean made an encouraging return to action at the Brussels Cycling Classic last weekend, going on the attack before placing fourth in the sprint.
After Girmay’s Gent-Wevelgem victory and Giro d’Italia stage win in 2022, expectations were high for this season, and he got off to a fast start with a stage win at the Volta a la Comunitat Valenciana. The rest of the Spring didn’t run to plan, of course, but he showed flashes of his quality at Tirreno-Adriatico.
Girmay is now building towards his Tour de France debut, and the Tour de Suisse will offer him a chance to run through the scales ahead of La Grande Boucle. “Of course I have ambition. As a child I dreamed of one day riding the Tour,” Girmay told Het Nieuwsblad last week. “But first I have to make sure that I can appear at the start in good shape.”
The Tour de Suisse should serve him in good stead, and it might also give him a chance to notch up his first WorldTour win of the year.
