You are right that 200 km of hilly racing will take its toll on the riders. But it's really up to Trek (and Sunweb) to decide how painful the local laps are going to be. I feel like the new longer route with a lot of flats takes a bit of the intensity out of the stage. But I guess it's important to avoid the leaders catching the gruppetto.
My point was solely on the final rounds. They'll deliver gaps when raced hard, even if it's a 200k pancake flat run-up to this (however, the new classics ToD Vejle Queen Stage never tends to have a pancake flat runup to final Vejle rounds
)
When the Vejle stage is raced like a
puncheur finish:
https://www.procyclingstats.com/race/tour-of-denmark/2022/gc
vs.
When Vejle stage is race like a
classics:
https://www.procyclingstats.com/race/tour-of-denmark/2021/stage-3
Look at the time gaps here. The stage should be hard enough for classics-styled racing.
That was exactly my point, the '21 edition, when Evenepoel is ready for happy-show, it becomes quite clear that even in Denmark small humps can make a huge difference placed at closing rounds.
The not so extreme year, however, when Lars Boom was a shared GC favourite with Matti Breschel I remember clearly too - the puncheurs opening up
and he was done for good. 2:30 gap on final 3 rounds, or rather on 2 rounds, i.e. some 13k. On a shared GC favourite.
That's why it grieves me quite that Copenhagen seems to have done an overhaul in terms of serious bid to UCI getting a WT one day classic race to Denmark.
This should first of all have been in Vejle - and at a time when the calendar was totally cleared, every big gun classic guy juming on.
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