It still hard to understand why they do the sequence of climbs they to on the Champoluc stage. Instead of doing Tzecore - Saint Panthaleon - Joux, it would be much better to change to Saint Panthaleon first and then add Arlaz before Zuccore and Joux.
It would have meant two ramps of 6-7 kms and 8,5-9 % before the last part of Joux. And no flat section between the last three climbs.
I remember last year I did something like going through the "main climb" on all of the mountain stages just looking at the average gradient and it was ridiculous. Basically Grappa at like 8% and every other one was below 7%.
Now if we say this years "mountain stages" are stages 7, 11, 15, 16, 17, 19 and 20 and the Main climbs are Tagliacozzo, Bismantova, Dori, San Valentino, Mortirolo, Joux and Finestre we note two things:
1.) Damn those are some weak ass mountain stages
2.) The average gradients of these climbs are:
5.4%, 5.2%, 5.5%, 6.4%, 7.6%, 6.9% and 9.2%
Now obviously this is way too simplistic to get a full picture and especially for San Valentino that number does not do the climb justice but still. It's 2025 man. How do you make a gt where the most important climb of the first two weeks is a 5% slog. Hell, I don't even know which of these climbs is the most important one. In reality some ramp on the hilly stages will probably cause bigger differences than any of those "mountain stages". Maybe I'm underrating stage 7 a bit but honestly that could be the most incredible stage design in existence and I'd still be annoyed by the rest.