There’s a reason the best riders in the world keep coming back to Switzerland in June. It’s not just the incredible roads — smooth ribbons of tarmac threading through valleys so green they seem almost artificial, past medieval towns where the clock towers have been telling the same hour since long before the bicycle was invented. It’s not just the beauty of the landscape either, though the Alps rising above the lakes of Lucerne and Thun have a way of reminding even those that are suffering that this is the greatest, most cinematic sport of all. 

No, more than all this, the reason the Tour de Suisse regularly attracts the top professionals is –  timing. Three weeks before the Tour de France, the short Tour de Suisse is the ideal event to sharpen form, test VO2 limits and to hone team tactics. 

The race has been doing this since 1933 — stress-testing ambition, revealing race fitness, occasionally breaking hearts. That first edition was won by the Austrian Max Bulla, who arrived in Zurich by overnight train just an hour before the start, stepped off the platform, pinned on his number, and beat Swiss rival Albert Büchi by over nine minutes in Stage 1. 

The great Italian Fausto Coppi won it. Jacques Anquetil won here, Eddy Merckx went and won it five times. Miguel Induráin, Jan Ullrich, LanceArmstrong – in his pre-ban years — the roll call of Tour de France legends who sharpened their blades in the Swiss summer reads like a who’s who of cycling’s greatest names. 

The 2026 edition, just the 89th ran from there 17th of July to the 21st, and will be remembered in the same breath.

Tadej Pogačar arrived for the start having already claimed Milan-San Remo and win the back of numerous other wins, looking for one last hard, multi-day effort as he prepared to win his 5th Tour de France – and join the Pantheon of the Greats who have done the same. 

He left having won three of five stages and set a new record for the largest winning margin in the race’s history — 6:32 over Richard Carapaz, eclipsing the previous record of 4:46. He now has won six of the seven most historic week-long stage races, the Tour of the Basque Country the only one still eluding him. 

The 2026 edition was compact — five stages only, 634 kilometres through some of the most beautiful terrain in the sport’s long relationship with this country. Stage one started and finished in Sondrio Italy. Would it be a cagey opening, with the GC guys staying  together and fighting it out at the end? Nope! 

Pogačar announced himself with a 72-kilometre solo raid that bore not the faintest resemblance to the behaviour of a man using a race as preparation. Stage two, through the rolling roads above Lake Maggiore, went to Romain Grégoire in a sprint from the break, Pogačar content to sit in the reduced bunch and bank GC seconds. The GC race was, in truth, already settled. 

Some  drama was provided on stage four, a 23.7-kilometre time trial around the flat roads of Aarburg — one of those perfectly preserved Swiss market towns where the old quarter looks exactly as it did in the 15th century, right down to the hilltop castle gazing down with quiet medieval elegance.  

The stunning town of Aarburg.

Towns such as Aarburg are a big draw for tourists to the nation.

Mathieu van der Poel set a scorching 26’38, then sat in the hot seat — literally, as it turned out, stripped to the waist in 30-degree heat  — and watched specialist after specialist fail to beat him. For an hour he was on course for his first WorldTour TT win.  

Van der Poel on his way to a very close 2nd place.

But Pogačar was not in the mood to let a possible stage win disappear. The last man down the ramp stopped the clock at 26:37.99, denying van der Poel by four hundredths of a second. The Dutchman’s face said everything. The UCI, less moved by the theatre than the rest of us, later fined MvdP 500 CHF for “damage to the image of the sport” on account of his shirtless hot-seat theatrics. The whole affair was quite humorously dubbed ‘NippleGate’. 

Pogacar’s greatest strength may be his determination to never give up.

The finale on Sunday was less a race than the Coronation of King Pogi. What inevitable, another stage win, was proven indeed to be fully inevitable. Stage five, starting and finishing in Villars-sur-Ollon, offered 4,451 metres of climbing over 150 kilometres in searing heat. Lenny Martinez, 22 years old and fearless, went clear from the break and built a lead of over a minute — but Pogačar launched on the final climb, reeled him in, and passed him with 800 metres remaining, winning by seven seconds.

The peloton winds its way upwards on Stage 5.

Pogacar, alone, untouchable, on his way to victory.

The GC picture was, in the end, almost beside the point. Carapaz second, Vacek third, both over six and a half minutes down. These are riders in excellent form. This is what Pogačar did to them in five days.

Which is the thing about Switzerland in June. The race has always served as a mirror — held up to riders so they can see themselves clearly before the Grande Boucle arrives and there’s nowhere left to hide. The mountains here are beautiful. The towns are beautiful. The roads, winding down from the high cols into valleys of improbable green, with cowbells and lake views and medieval steeples catching the afternoon sun — all of it unarguably beautiful. 

And riding through it all, peerless and unhurried, beautifully ruthless… Tadej Pogačar.