3000 meters of climbing in a day that from afar doesn't look that difficult. The first half is not indeed, but the rolling roads intensify quite a lot in the final half. And we'll have a combination of short efforts that will weight on the legs of many. But it's a more difficult finale than the previous.
There is a 5.2-kilometer long climb at 6.2% that ends with 17Km to go; immediately after a steep descent another 2 kilometers at 6.9% (they end with 10 kilometers to go... And all of this must be paced carefully as there is actually no descent afterwards, just a plateau section into the final ascent.
The climb into Heiden is not brutal, but hard enough for some action and potential gaps. It's 3.4 kilometers long at 5.3% which, with this difficult finale and likely a stage win/bonifications present at the line, will see an all-out effort from the GC favourites.
***
Vincenzo Albanese,
Romain Grégoire** Marc Hirschi, Quinn Simmons, Clément Champoussin, Julian Alaphilippe
* Kévin Vauquelin, Oscar Onley, João Almeida, Michael Woods, Jan Christen, Andrea Bagioli, Fabio Christen, Paul Lapeira, Stefano Oldani