PREVIEW | Tour de Romandie 2024 stage 2 - Mountain battle between Ayuso, Hindley, Mas, Martínez, Vlasov, Rodríguez, Bernal and the Yates twins

The Tour de Romandie is scheduled from April 23rd to 28th, a fixture in the World Tour where multiple riders have the chance to clinch victories. This stage race follows the Ardennes classics, offering a prime opportunity for riders to shine. Let's preview stage 2, where significant differences in the overall classification are anticipated.

Roads that will be familiar to the Romandie peloton. A lot of the route from Fribourg into Aigle has been raced in the past, but the finale of the stage will be quite hard and should set some important differences in the fight for the overall classification. Stage 2 ends in the climb to Les Marecottes.

The first half of the stage is almost completely flat, and the riders then find the climb to les Mosses which summits with 57 kilometers to go. However the climb is not steep. What follows is a long descent into Aigle where the headquarter of the UCI is.

The riders will not stop, but instead race into the final climb which starts a few dozen kilometers later. The climb to Les Marecottes is 8.4 kilometers at 7.4%. Not overly long, overly steep or overly technical, but all-in-all tough enough to make differences. It's a rather constant ascent but it does feature double-digit gradients in the final kilometer which means that differences can be created right until the finish line.

The Weather

Cold, cold, cold... Temperatures around 5 degrees throughout most of the stage, higher in the higher altitude points. Now snow or rain is expected during the day, but it will fall overnight and make the roads rather nervous in the descents.

The Favourites

UAE - The team to beat. In this stage you can't really play tactically to great effect, but still they have enough quality to be the main favourites. Brandon McNulty has already lost chance to fight for the GC. But Juan Ayuso fresh off a Itzulia Basque Country triumph; defending champion Adam Yates and Pavel Sivakov will all be contenders for such a climb. The team will want to take over the lead of the race.

BORA - Jai Hindley just renewed his contract and must be very motivated. The Australian was third at Tirreno-Adriatico where he matched Ayuso perfectly. Perhaps he will love the other mountain stage, this one is not overly hard, but he can make some differences. BORA have Aleksandr Vlasov who has won the mountain stage of Paris-Nice. It will be interesting to see if he shows once again his form of March.

INEOS - INEOS will have several cards. A very strong team with quality climbers to support the several leaders. Egan Bernal finished on the podium of the Volta a Catalunya and after having a good Liège-Bastogne-Liège, he could certainly do well here. The British team have Thymen Arensman who's been racing very well this season and is finishing his preparation for the Giro d'Italia; but also Carlos Rodríguez, a stage winner at last year's Tour, who won the queen stage and finished second at the recent Itzulia Basque Country behind Juan Ayuso.

Groupama - Lenny Martínez has seriously been impressing over the past year, and at this point is very much a favourite to win in such a race. He was second to Jonas Vingegaard at the summit finish in O Gran Camiño. Recently, he has taken victories. Good for the long climbs but also explosive, he can certainly take the stage win and also jump in to the race lead. Groupama also have David Gaudu, who seems to be the most motivated in ages, who can do quite well if he truly has his best legs. A very dangerous duo of pur climbers.

We've got Movistar coming in with Enric Mas, the Spaniard will be looking forward to the mountains and looked lively today. He will have the support of Iván Sosa. Team Jayco AlUla duo of Simon Yates and Luke Plapp will both be quite dangerous on a climb like this, Yates being the leader however and a very big candidate for the win. Add Tao Geoghegan Hart, Ilan van Wilder, Richard Carapaz and last year's podium finisher Damiano Caruso and we've got a few podium contenders if they are on their best day.

Additionally, we could expect other outsiders like Guillaume Martin, Koen Bouwman, Clément Berthet, Louis Meintjes, Cristian Rodríguez, Harm Vanhoucke and David de la Cruz who may take advantage of bad days from other riders to get themselves into the Top10 or perhaps even better.

Prediction Tour de Romandie 2024 stage 2:

*** Juan Ayuso, Jai Hindley,
** Adam Yates, Aleksandr Vlasov, Carlos Rodríguez, Lenny Martínez
* Pavel Sivakov, Egan Bernal, Thymen Arensman, David Gaudu, Enric Mas, Simon Yates, Luke Plapp, Ilan van Wilder

Pick: Juan Ayuso