Preview - Tour de Suisse 2022 stage 5

Stage five of the Tour de Suisse can be very tricky, however the fact that it comes right before the three decisive stages will likely affect the race in terms of how likely it is to see long-range attacks. It will be possible however. The starts takes place in altitude, before the riders dip down into the great lakes region, and head into the Mendrisio area for an explosive final circuit.

It's a stage that can both see a conservative ride in the peloton with the GC riders neutralizing each other, or it can completely tear up the overall classification and make race-changing differences.

It will be ridden three times, and has a distance of 28 kilometers with four small hills to tackle in it with descents after each one. The first comes with 20.5Km to go (in the final lap) and features 2Km at 5.1% to Castel San Pietro, and afterwards the riders will have a 1 kilometer at 8.6% gradient which is the most explosive of the ramps – with 14.5Km to go.

The hardest of the hilltops comes with 8.5 kilometers to go, it features 7.7% average gradient throughout 2.5 kilometer, a more constant effort however due to it’s proximity to the finish it may be chosen to attack. After a small and steep descent, there will then be a run-up to the final ascent which is 1.9 kilometers long at 5.8%, with some more gentle gradients towards the line.

**** Remco Evenepoel

*** Sergio Higuita, Marc Hirschi

** Aleksandr Vlasov, Jakob Fuglsang, Andreas Kron

* Alexey Lutsenko, Tom Pidcock, Max Schachmann, Adam Yates