The 2026 WorldTour’s 10th stage race, the 89th Tour de Suisse, kicked off on Wednesday with a day in Lombardia in Italy where Tadej Pogačar soloed 70 kilometres to victory. He holds the race lead along with the points and KOM classification leads. This year the Tour de Suisse is five stages cut down from eight.
Preliminaries
The Tour de Suisse is Pogačar’s warm up for the Tour de France. This spring he stepped high, wide and plentiful, winning Strade Bianche, Milan-San Remo, Ronde van Vlaanderen and Liège-Bastogne-Liège, before triumphing in the Tour de Romandie over Florian Lipowitz and Lenny Martinez. The Slovenian was also runner-up to Wout Van Aert in Paris-Roubaix.
One of the world champion’s main competitors will be compatriot Primož Roglič, 18th in the Tour de Romandie, 16th in Itzulia Basque Country, third in Milano-Torino and fifth in Tirreno-Adriatico. Champion in 2021, Richard Carapaz’s high mark of 2026 is 10th in the Volta a Catalunya. Can Mikel Landa get his season going in Switzerland?
Although he enjoyed a strong start in the chrono, Roglič dropped from third to 16th on Itzulia Basque Country’s final day.
Very few of last year’s top-10 were on the start line in Sondrio, but ‘cross sensation Thibau Nys, runner-up to Mathieu van der Poel in the 2025-2026 World Cup, was riding his first stage race of the year.
Pier-André Côté was the lone Canadian.
The Course
The first day was a loop starting and ending in Italy. Although there were four categorized climbs and one big uncategorized climb, the battleground would be on the final ascent, a short but 11.5 percent Cat. 3 that crested 8.5 km from the finish line in Sondrio.
Watch that last climb, it’s a doozy. Image by La FlammeRouge
Côté was in the first breakaway effort but he was caught while the other two fellows loped clear. The first classified climb of the 89th Tour de Suisse was pretty sharp. Puglio in Monte is 2.8 km of 10.1 percent, and the escape duo reached it with a 2:30 lead. But only Fredrik Dversnes Lavik survived it and came away with a smaller gap. At the bonification sprint, Pogačar took two seconds and then took off with a couple of others for freak everyone out.
Pogačar just kept going, catching Dversnes Lavik with 71 km to go. Soon he was solo. Roglič, Carapaz, Dversnes Lavik and Matthew Riccitello were part of an eight-rider chase. The world champion tipped over Cat. 2 Triangia 1:15 ahead of the chase, which continued to grow.
World champion having trouble with his radio.
Carapaz decided to lit out after Pogačar on his own. In turn, Andrea Baglioli took off after Carapaz on his own. The Ecuadorian had to hold off the Italian for second place. Right at the end Roglič also bolted
The closest chase group finished 4:00 after the winner.
A similar finale to Wednesday’s is set also for Thursday.
89th Tour de Suisse Stage 1
1) Tadej Pogačar (Slovenia/UAE-Emirates) 3:28:51
2) Richard Carapaz (Ecuador/EF Education-Easypost) +2:14
3) Andrea Baglioli (Italy/Lidl-Trek) +2:29