The Tour de Romandie celebrates its 75th anniversary
The Tour de Romandie was held in 1947 as a special event to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Union Cycliste Suisse, in the form of a 7-stage race. The winner of the race was the Belgian Désiré Keteleer ahead of Gino Bartali, and from the first moment it was a huge success. Given the great popularity raised, the organizers decided to repeat the adventure the following year, and the following, and the following... until today, when the Tour de Romandie celebrates its 75th anniversary, consolidated as one of the most important one-week races of the year.
Route
As usual in recent years, the Tour de Romandie opens up with a very short time trial prologue (5.2 km) that will define the first race leader. Stages 2, 3 and 4 have mid-mountain profiles with no chances for sprinters, but no big climbs either. The race will presumably be decided in the last two days: stage 5 presents the only high-mountain profile and is expected to be very tough, with 6 categorized climbs and 4174 meters of elevation gain. Finally, the race closes with a 16 km time trial, of which the last 10 are on the climb to Villards (10.2 km at 8.1%).
Favorites
The potential winners of the general classification are climbers who can perform good time trials or time trialists who climb well: Geraint Thomas (600), Ethan Hayter (1000), Brandon McNulty (800), Ion Izagirre (600), Ben O'Connor (600 ), Marc Hirschi (800), Maximilian Schachmann (1,000), Rohan Dennis (600), Rigoberto Urán (600), David de la Cruz (600), Mattia Cattaneo (400), Patrick Bevin (200), Damiano Caruso (600) or Sergio Higuita (600) are men with such qualities.