Joao Almeida won the closing time trial on Sunday and Adam Yates finished second to seal overall victory as the UAE Team Emirates duo dominated the Tour of Switzerland.
Almeida started the final time trial, a 15.7-kilometre uphill stretch from Aigle to Villars-sur-Ollon, 31 seconds behind overall leader Yates. The Portuguese rider won in 33 minutes 23 seconds, but was only nine seconds ahead of his teammate at the line.
The UAE pair had taken the top two spots in each of the three previous stages. They both finished with two stage victories.
At the age of 31, Yates announced his return to top form after suffering concussion in a crash at the UAE Tour in February. He collected his 28th victory as a professional.
"It's definitely up there," said Yates. "About two days to go, I wasn't sure if I could do it.
"I just couldn't accelerate, I was already over the limit so I just tried to hold the pace and thankfully it was enough.
"I'm still out of breath because it was such a hard climb, but one thing I had in the back of my mind for a while was the 2019 Tirreno-Adriatico where I lost the TT on the last day by one second and this had lived rent-free in my head for many years so it's finally good to win a race and win it with a TT.
"To win any big bike race is a big privilege and to share the podium with Joao as well, he's a special teammate."
The battle for overall victory came down to the final climb of the eight-day race. In the end, Yates would prevail, the British rider exceeding even his own expectations to hold off his teammate. He had predicted after Stage 7 the previous day that Almeida would take “almost a minute” off him and pinch the yellow jersey at the death.
At the first checkpoint, coming after 5km of flat road racing, Yates had only conceded seven seconds to Almeida, a deficit he turned into a lead as the climbing began, reaching the second checkpoint three seconds ahead.
Almeida would finish the day in the box seat, however, having set a mark of 33:23. That would be good enough for the stage victory, the team’s fourth in as many days.
But it wouldn’t be enough to reel in the Stage 5 and 7 victor Yates, who trailed by a mere nine seconds at the finish and, with it, secured a second WorldTour stage race of his career.
Behind the leading pair, 2023 champion Mattias Skjelmose (Lidl-Trek) rounded out the podium at 21 seconds down, in the process jumping ahead of Egan Bernal (Ineos Grenadiers) to take the final spot on the GC podium at 3:02 down on winner Yates.
Yates came third in the last Tour de France and will be team leader Tadej Pogacar's second in this year's edition. Almeida, who acted as pacemaker when Yates won Stage 5, will also be part of the Tour de France team.
"I'm really happy with the time trial stage victory, I think my first TT victory except nationals so that's pretty good," said Almeida.
"At the start of the day, I knew it was quite impossible to win the GC against Adam."
