Tour de Suisse

Before this week, Ilan Van Wilder finished in the top ten at four important World Tour stage races during his tenure with Soudal Quick-Step: Tour de Pologne, UAE Tour, Paris-Nice and Itzulia Basque Country. On Sunday, he added another important result to this list: eighth overall at the Tour de Suisse, one of the oldest stage races in the world, viewed by many as the “fourth Grand Tour”, due to its prestige, difficulty and impressive list of winners.

This year’s edition, in particular, was an incredibly demanding one, with a total of five uphill finishes over just eight days, scorching heat, plenty of climbing and some really excruciating gradients that forced the general classification men to dig deep. Van Wilder pushed himself on all of these stages, always there with the main group of contenders and posting a string of solid results in the mountains.

The most recent of these came in the 10km uphill individual time trial that took place Sunday afternoon in Stockhütte, where the slopes reached 16%, leading to some wide gaps between the riders who fought for a good general classification. Ilan went through the checkpoint with one of the best times, and continued to maintain a steady pace on the stinging gradients, finishing the stage won by Joao Almeida (UAE Team Emirates) – who also took home the yellow jersey – in tenth place. This elevated him to eighth in the final standings of the Tour de Suisse, the last World Tour race before next month’s Tour de France.

“I am satisfied with both the time trial and this week, in general. We did a good job as a team and always did our best in what was an incredibly hard race. I am happy with another World Tour top ten, as it confirms the step I have made from last year. It’s something that only motivates me to work more and become better”, said Ilan, the best Belgian rider of the 88th Tour de Suisse.

Photo credit: ©Tim De Waele / Getty Images