We may only be a day out of the Spring Classics, but the cycling calendar moves on quickly, and it’s back to WorldTour stage racing on Tuesday with the start of the six-day Tour de Romandie, headlined by Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates-XRG).
Coming so close to the Giro d’Italia, the Tour de Romandie in Switzerland is usually a race for the riders on track for the Tour de France and often marks the early start of the Tour build-up. It follows Itzulia Basque Country and Liège-Bastogne-Liège, so it often sees two different types of Tour riders converge for the first time: those who have committed their spring to stage racing, and those who were off doing the Classics.
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Several of the stages can be counted as medium mountain or hilly stages, with only one summit finish, which leaves them open to a lot of different outcomes, and opportunities abound for breakaway specialists and non-GC climbers – even those not going for the overall win can be hopeful of a stage victory here.
One look at the start list will very quickly reveal to you one clear favourite in Pogačar, who is riding Romandie for the first time this year in a slight change to his usual Tour build-up, but the lack of longer climbs and abundance of punchier, opportunistic stages could play into the hands of his rivals. They have plenty of chances to try to get the jump on him, instead of just praying they survive in the mountains.
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