PREVIEW | Tour de Romandie 2025 stage 2 - Will 11% climb inspire Remco Evenepoel to attack this time around?

The Tour de Romandie will be the final stage-race of the spring period, and the last before the Giro d'Italia. The Swiss race every year attracts some of the best stage-racers in the world for it's climbing and time-trial tests, and this year will be no exception. We preview stage 2.

Stage 2 is another very hard day in it's start with two quite steep climbs, these ones longer however and better suited to the climbers. They will be 7 kilometers at 7.7% and then 9.8 kilometers at 5.4% (although it gets much steeper than that), both concluded with only 42 kilometers of racing.

It will be appetizing terrain for a strong breakaway to be formed. But later in the day there will be more climbs. one of them being 5.8 kilometers at 5.9% with a descent included, and the second a familiar one for the riders.

The peloton will face the ascent to Chaumont once again where the overall classification can be split to bits not too far from the flat finish in Saint-Aubin Sauges. 3.2 kilometers at 11.4%, it ends with only 48 kilometers to go this time around, and most of the way to the finish is either downhill or flat.

This would be a stage that in a Grand Tour would provide tons of fireworks in the fight for the breakaway, and in most races the same could be said. But in Romandie the GC fight has not yet opened so not many may want to take risks, and today there simply was no-one showing interest. So it may be a standstill once again, which would be disappointing for the spectacle.

But it is more likely that there will be attacks. A strong breakaway forming is quite likely, and with the finale being quite easier and having the ascent closer to the finish, it would only take one rider having the intention to spark a fire in the peloton.

*** Oscar Onley, Aurélien Paret-Peintre, Remco Evenepoel
** Matthew Brennan, Lennard Kämna, Iván Romeo, Clément Champoussin
* Carlos Rodríguez, Samuel Watson, João Almeida, Jay Vine, Aleksandr Vlasov, Eddie Dunbar, Pablo Castrillo, Lenny Martínez, Lennert van Eetvelt

Pick: Oscar Onley

How: Reduced group sprint