Tadej finished the Tour de Suisse the way he started it – with an outstanding victory. After winning stages 1 and 4, he also showed his exceptional strength in the queen stage 5, which started and finished in Villars-sur-Ollon. Over three laps, the riders had to cover 150.7 kilometers and 4,451 meters of elevation gain, as they had to climb Col de la Croix three times.
The decision came on the final climb, which Tadej began more than two minutes behind the breakaway. His teammates from UAE Team Emirates – XRG first cut the gap by setting a fierce pace, and then, just under 9 kilometers from the finish, Tadej set off on a solo chase.
He reeled in the escapees one by one until only Lenny Martinez (Bahrain Victporious) remained ahead of him. The Frenchman was also climbing excellently toward the top, but Tadej still caught him 900 meters before the finish and celebrated his third stage win at the 89th Tour de Suisse.
»It was an extremely hard day, the course was extremely hard. As a team we did an excellent job, but each lap was harder, it was all-out. Decatlhon set a very hard pace on the final climb, I tried to keep going at that rhythm. It was a brutal day, it was extremely hot, I’m happy with the win and that I’m going home to Urška,« Tadej said at the finish, and reminded of the serious crash involving his fiancée Urška Žigart in the 1st stage of the women’s Tour de Suisse.
With his success in Switzerland, where he beat his closest chaser Richard Carapaz (EF Education Easy Post) by 6:32, Tadej has already raised his season win tally to 13 and his career total to 121. In doing so, he has won six of the seven most prestigious one-week races, with only the Tour of the Basque Country now missing from his list.
However, the Tour de Suisse also served as a dress rehearsal for the Tour, where from July 4 to 26 he will be chasing his fifth yellow jersey. That is also why today he was pushing on the pedals all-out on the finishing climb. »It will be similar at the Tour with the heat and a lot of elevation gain before the finish. It was good to test the legs, the heart, and the lungs. I went all out; it was very tough, but I liked the climb. Now I’ll try to reset a bit at home, do some specific training, and pretty soon we’ll already be heading to Barcelona,« Tadej added.