Lesser known races 2026 edition

[Dazed and Confused]

Great, unpredictable and open racing in turkey. Current GC standing:

1	2	▲1	Berwick Sebastian	Caja Rural - Seguros RGA	5	12″	21:03:03
2	1	▼1	Sosa Iván Ramiro	Equipo Kern Pharma		10″	0:05
3	5	▲2	Bonneu Kamiel	Solution Tech NIPPO Rali			0:59
4	9	▲5	Jegat Jordan	TotalEnergies		5″	1:05
5	3	▼2	Breuillard Nicolas	TotalEnergies		4″	1:14
6	4	▼2	Fancellu Alessandro	MBH Bank CSB Telecom Fort		2″	1:20
7	11	▲4	Bizkarra Mikel	Euskaltel - Euskadi			1:47
8	7	▼1	Mulubrhan Henok	XDS Astana Team		3″	1:53
9	13	▲4	Ruiz Ibon	Equipo Kern Pharma			2:17
10	10	-	Parra José Félix	Caja Rural - Seguros RGA			2:37

Tight. The next two stages:

Barring an incident, the first one of these won't make a difference, but the second one, with the uphill finish, the top spot in the GC is in play. All this translates to a must see stage on Sunday or at least part of it .

 

[search]

Barring an incident, the first one of these won't make a difference, but the second one, with the uphill finish, the top spot in the GC is in play. All this translates to a must see stage on Sunday or at least part of it .

the roadbook has the finish at 870m altitude (instead of 900m here), so honestly not sure a climb this steep even exists. It seems to be a rather new, four-wide road up to the presidential palace, which may have caused a bit of a glitch on la-flamme-rouge. Usually stages like this are for the sprinters.

 

[Mayomaniac]

the roadbook has the finish at 870m altitude (instead of 900m here), so honestly not sure a climb this steep even exists. It seems to be a rather new, four-wide road up to the presidential palace, which may have caused a bit of a glitch on la-flamme-rouge. Usually stages like this are for the sprinters.

Ankara is rather hilly, tbf.

 

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Ankara is rather hilly, tbf.

okay, well, we will see, I guess. That part of the city is not on street view, and the Tour of Turkey hasn't come here for almost 30 years.

This is the finish (from the bottom right corner to the palace), but hard to estimate the steepness from a photo, of course.