The Stage - Potentially explosive. There are barely any fiat kilometres through the day and not a moment’s rest for the riders from start to end, which has gradients that touch 20%.
The Route - Heading inland from the coastal town of Follonica, the road starts climbing from the gun with 5.6km of uphill to Prosata. There’s then a lull in the road before it kicks up again during the early stages before the second ‘peak’ – although it’s more like a lump – at Ribolla. Shortly after that we have our first real climb of the day, a 5.4km ascent to Roccastrada. A longer decent, going past the Stazione di Roccastrada (yes, train station) and then some lumpy roads with a spike in the middle before the start of the day’s longest ascent, the Passo del Lume Spento, 12 kilometres at 4.5%, leading to the day’s highest peak, although that is by no means the end of the hard roads.
A decent takes them into the scenic Tuscan commune known as the San Quirico d'Orcia, and then there’s more climbing – roughly 3 kilometres – although this is much sharper than the Passo del Lume Spento. There’s a descent of similar length but the road is actually already rising again slowly before the climb of La Foce, about 5.3 kilometres from base to peak.
The peak is split in two with little wall climbs before one of the day’s steepest descents, a rolling downward section that ended at Chiusi before the next climb of the day, about 4 kilometres of sharp uphill roads before a rather long and sweeping descent.
There are two back to back climbs at Castiglione Della Valle and then Cerquto.
The last 50 kilometres are arguably the some of the hardest of the stage. The next 20 kilometres, running through Ponte di Ferro and the Boulevard Di Gualdo Cattane, are all uphill before what ought to be an exceptional closing course.
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The Finish - There are 2 laps of the closing circuit that take in the climb through Trevi. After a sharp decent, we begin two passes of the day’s finishing wall climb. It begins rather tamely – if you can believe such a thing – with the first kilometre averaging 3.3%. However, then the road really sparks into life. The next 500 meters average 11.8% with a peak of 16%.
Mercifully there’s a relent; a period of flay (although you’re taking hundreds of meters) and there’s an extreme period of once again 10% which is sandwiched between two false pieces of flat before the final section of the climb. This averages a staggering 15.9% but the last 300 metres does actually touch 20%, before one last loop to take the finish.
The Winner - Will be able to handle heavy gradients and repeated climbing. A strong team is an absolute must given the attritional nature of the stage.
The Contenders - This is all about how the terrain is raced. The profile does not do justice to the amount of climbing, especially repeated so close together, and this is attacking territory for nearly any type of rider. We’ll focus on the overall contenders given the terrain and the fact they have the strongest teams.
There was a similar stage to this last year, where Geraint Thomas (Sky) went on a solo attack to win stage 2 of Tirreno-Adriatico in Pomarance. Tom Dumoulin (Team Sunweb) fell short of catching Thomas, and finished just ahead of the sprinting bunch, led to the line by Peter Sagan (Bora Hansgrohe).
That didn’t have the repeated amount of climbing though, and initial thoughts are that the overall contenders can eye this up for overall glory. Geraint Thomas is ideally set to take the race lead along with Chris Froome for Sky, but the finish in Trevi looks readymade for the Welshman, whose physical condition might be closer to A1 than Froome’s.
Sky could also use Michal Kwiatkowski as another contender here if he isn’t shackled to the two joint leaders.
Mitchelton-Scott have an overall counter in Adam Yates, whose second in Milano-Torino suggests that he’ll be at home if this is raced like a classic. His experience riding the Vuelta is ideal for this.
Quick-Step have multiple options here although depending on how fast the day is raced it will be mightily hard to keep the likes of Philippe Gilbert in until the end and this looks an opportunity for Bob Jungels to stake an early claim at the overall too given his classic style skills and climbing ability.
Rigoberto Uran can do it all and EF Education first have him in a reasonable spot after the first team time trial. He showed good form in Colombia and this is a chance to put rivals into difficulty before the queen stage tomorrow too – his one day racing experience should serve him very well.
Because of Tom Dumoulin’s illness, Sunweb must now focus on Wilco Kelderman and the Dutchman should be eyeing this stage to test his legs. It will be interesting to see where Primoz Roglic (Lotto-Jumbo) and Fabio Aru (Team UAE) are this early.
