14,000 metres of elevation in five days: Is this the toughest week of racing on the 2025 calendar?

Next year’s route for the Tour of the Alps has been announced, and the Giro d’Italia warm up race has a profile that even the likes of Tadej Pogacar and Jonas Vingegaard will raise an eyebrow at. It’s got five days full of climbing, climbing, and more climbing, and the riders will either be physically broken or primed and ready for the Giro by the end of the five days.

The race is 700km long in total, and features an eye-watering 14,000 metres of elevation gain, as the riders travel through the Alps from San Lorenzo Dorsino to Lienz in less than a week.

The stage race kicks off on April 21st in the Trentino region, and the race was won by Juan Pedro Lopez of Lidl-Trek in 2024. The most challenging day looks set to be on stage 2, when the peloton will take on two 16 kilometre laps in Sterzing and Vipiteno, including a climb of the Telves di Sopra which is 4km at a gradient of 7%.

The Tour of the Alps is often seen as one of the toughest warm up races for the grand tour season, and next year looks set to be one of the most challenging editions yet. Will the brutal elevation be enough to attract defending Giro champion Tadej Pogacar to the start line? Or will we see Jonas Vingegaard and Remco Evenepoel taking on the Tour of the Alps, if they are planning a Giro-Tour bid in 2025?