2016, 70th Tour de Romandie, April 26th - May 1st, WT

[TomekA]

70th Tour de Romandie!

Startlist: http://www.procyclingstats.com/race/Tour_de_Romandie_2016_Startlist

Prologue, La Chaux-de-Fonds, ITT (3.95km)

Stage 1: La Chaux-de-Fonds - Moudon (169km)

Stage 2: Moudon - Morgins (173.9km)

Stage 3: Sion, ITT (15.11km)

Stage 4: Conthey - Villars-sur-Ollon (172.7 km)

Stage 5, Ollon - Genève (177.4km)

So we have hilly prologue, hilly ITT, two MTFs and two let's say mountain stages with easier final parts

Last year TOP 10:
1) Zakarin
2) Spilak 00:17
3) Froome 00:35
4) Pinot 00:49
5) Uran 01:20
6) S Yates 01:21
7) Majka 01:24
8) N Quintana 01:42
9) Bardet 01:43
10) Nibali 01:54

The favourites?
Froome - usually this is the first serious race for him, two times winner (2013, 2014) and 3rd in 2015. IMO the biggest favourite and I'm really curious to see how he will perform this year here
Spilak - winner in 2010, 2nd three years in a row (2013, 2014, 2015)
It's very interesting what Zakarin will do after last year win
Pinot looks quite good this season
The route suits Quintana but there is a risk that he can be past his spring peak and he was very average last year here
There are also Bardet, Porte, van Garderen, Majka, T. Dumoulin, S.Yates, Albasini, Kelderman, Uran, Rolland, Talansky, Mollema, Hesjedal, Lopez and Frank

Looks like interesting race

 

[yaco]

S.Yates no certainty to ride - Slow recovery from fall at Pais Vasco -Yates had to withdraw from Fleche and LBL.

It's a hot field and the parcours seems a big tougher than 2015.

 

[BigMac]

Faria da Costa should be riding as well. If he finishes third he will go on to win Suisse, that much we can tell.

A pity they finish atop Villars-sur-Ollone instead of descending like two years ago.

 

[pink_jersey]

Spectacular field. Froome to win this in front of Pinot. Spilak 3rd.

 

[May0maniac]

Shoul be a fun race to watch, I'm curious about Froome's TT skills, we haven't seen a great ITT from him since the 2014 Dauphine ITT.
Spilak should be on the podium, Pinot could do really well, I don't know about Rui Costa.

 

[sir fly]

Froome - Quintana surely has to be the highlight of this race.
I'm looking forward to.

 

[Valv.Piti]

Bumping my question from the general news thread, I didnt realise this one was created:
Romandie has 2 MTF's, hardly news, but does anyone have the profiles for the 2 climbs to Morgins and Villars Ollon or whatever it is called?

And just to contribute a little, those ITT's are both super hard. I wouldn't be surprised if Quintana won one of them (if he is in good shape, that is). I dont know why one of them isn't flat, but I guess hilly/mountainious TT's are the new thingy. A very good Tour prep.

 

[roundabout]

Re:

Bumping my question from the general news thread, I didnt realise this one was created:
Romandie has 2 MTF's, hardly news, but does anyone have the profiles for the 2 climbs to Morgins and Villars Ollon or whatever it is called?

And just to contribute a little, those ITT's are both super hard. I wouldn't be surprised if Quintana won one of them (if he is in good shape, that is). I dont know why one of them isn't flat, but I guess hilly/mountainious TT's are the new thingy. A very good Tour prep.

viewtopic.php?p=1906926#p1906926

 

[Gigs_98]

Froome is definitely the favorite and the route looks good for him.

1st Froome
2nd Zakarin
3rd Pinot

 

[Valv.Piti]

Re: Re:

Bumping my question from the general news thread, I didnt realise this one was created:
Romandie has 2 MTF's, hardly news, but does anyone have the profiles for the 2 climbs to Morgins and Villars Ollon or whatever it is called?

And just to contribute a little, those ITT's are both super hard. I wouldn't be surprised if Quintana won one of them (if he is in good shape, that is). I dont know why one of them isn't flat, but I guess hilly/mountainious TT's are the new thingy. A very good Tour prep.

viewtopic.php?p=1906926#p1906926

Thanks. Doesnt look super hard, but should be enough for good racing!

 

[BigMac]

Couple other profiles.

 

[BigMac]

Re:

Shoul be a fun race to watch, I'm curious about Froome's TT skills, we haven't seen a great ITT from him since the 2014 Dauphine ITT.
Spilak should be on the podium, Pinot could do really well, I don't know about Rui Costa.

That the toughest stage is on the penultimate day doesn't bode well for him. He will win the TT though.

 

[May0maniac]

Re: Re:

Shoul be a fun race to watch, I'm curious about Froome's TT skills, we haven't seen a great ITT from him since the 2014 Dauphine ITT.
Spilak should be on the podium, Pinot could do really well, I don't know about Rui Costa.

That the toughest stage is on the penultimate day doesn't bode well for him. He will win the TT though.

For me Dumoulin has to be the favourite for the TT, even if it's a hard one, he was able to win the 2015 Pais Vasco TT.

 

[BigMac]

Re: Re:

Shoul be a fun race to watch, I'm curious about Froome's TT skills, we haven't seen a great ITT from him since the 2014 Dauphine ITT.
Spilak should be on the podium, Pinot could do really well, I don't know about Rui Costa.

That the toughest stage is on the penultimate day doesn't bode well for him. He will win the TT though.

For me Dumoulin has to be the favourite for the TT, even if it's a hard one, he was able to win the 2015 Pais Vasco TT.

It was mainly tongue in cheek due to Costa's trademark superpeak on the antepenultimate day (and last day for that matter) of racing. So yeah, I agree, Dumo is still the favourite.

 

[Red Rick]

And I was thinking that the Pais Vasco profiles looked ridiculous.

I wish all organisers would use the same program to make stage profiles, or at least use similar, decent ones. Why do they use make profiles like these?

Anyway, depends on how Froome prepared. Wouldn't say that much if he doesn't win, except if he totally sucked. Don't know why Quintana is riding. Is he still planning on riding on spring form?

 

[BigMac]

Clearly you've never see the Volta a Portugal or Algarve profiles. Can't get worse than that.

 

[Red Rick]

Re:

Clearly you've never see the Volta a Portugal or Algarve profiles. Can't get worse than that.

Never bother with Algarve cause I know by now what Malhao is like. But they're awful as well.

Now do you know why they use crappy software like that or not?

 

[BigMac]

Re: Re:

Clearly you've never see the Volta a Portugal or Algarve profiles. Can't get worse than that.

Never bother with Algarve cause I know by now what Malhao is like. But they're awful as well.

Now do you know why they use crappy software like that or not?

Don't even think they use any kind of software. They just throw money at some graphic designer to draw them raw thinking a pretty (albeit useless) profile sells better.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Vuelta a Comunidad de Madrid profiles are worse than the Volta a Portugal ones.

 

[BigMac]

Wow, ugly and useless.

 

[jsem94]

God. They should just start using Cronoescalada and not give a crap.

 

[PremierAndrew]

Re:

Shoul be a fun race to watch, I'm curious about Froome's TT skills, we haven't seen a great ITT from him since the 2014 Dauphine ITT.
Spilak should be on the podium, Pinot could do really well, I don't know about Rui Costa.

Yup, will be interesting. There was like no TTing in last year's Tour which is why he didn't really bother practising TTs in 2015, and that would explain his relatively poor performances in the TTs (by his standards at least)

But if he's serious about the olympic double, he should have gained a fair bit of that TT ability back by now, and that should show to some extent in the 15km TT.

PS Why the **** is Kittel riding this

 

[liamito]

Also in Switzerland it will be very cold next week. Really weather for Spilak to bring his A game.

 

[Armchair Cyclist]

Re:

Vuelta a Comunidad de Madrid profiles are worse than the Volta a Portugal ones.

There are some aspects of the 80s that need not feature in the current revival, like desk -top-publishing standards ...

 

[Brullnux]

Re:

Vuelta a Comunidad de Madrid profiles are worse than the Volta a Portugal ones.

I love the completely random numbers in the scale.