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Oesterreich-Rundfahrt (Tour of Austria) 2019, July 6-12 (2.1

When the entire cycling world is looking at Brussels and waiting for the beginning of le Tour, another important and interesting event is about to start.

The Tour of Austria - always remaining in the shadow of Tour de France, for calendar reasons at least - this year has to face the following two additional factors:

1) it starts on the same day as le Tour (usually, Tour of Austria is being held somewhere near the middle of Tour de France);
2) for some reasons, it has been downgraded to a 2.1 category (previously 2.HC).

Hopefully, this would not result in less attention or less interest about this race, as it offers (as usual) a very promising parcours, filled with hilly/mountain stages and including two extremely hard MTFs, a GC-relevant action being possible every day.

Route:

July 6, Prologue: Wels - Wels (flat ITT)
tour-of-austria-2019-prologue-profile-7dd61f1a1d.jpg


July 7, Stage 1: Grieskirchen - Freistadt (hilly)
tour-of-austria-2019-stage-1-profile-26c1b8d489.jpg


July 8, Stage 2: Zwettl - Wiener Neustadt (hilly)
tour-of-austria-2019-stage-2-profile-03a84e6a11.jpg


July 9, Stage 3: Kirschlag - Frohnleiten (hilly)
tour-of-austria-2019-stage-3-profile-240abe4d53.jpg


July 10, Stage 4: Radstadt - Fuscher Törl (mountain, MTF)
tour-of-austria-2019-stage-4-profile-7c29d63e49.jpg


July 11, Stage 5: Bruck - Kitzbühel (mountain/hilly)
tour-of-austria-2019-stage-5-profile-67d96d1b02.jpg


July 12, Stage 6: Kitzbühel - Kitzbüheler Horn (MTF)
tour-of-austria-2019-stage-6-profile-395a4df4d8.jpg


Startlist:

Full startlst: https://www.oesterreich-rundfahrt.at/images/NEWS/2018/startinglist_2019.pdf

3 x WT, 7 x PCT, 8 x CT

No top-tier riders, but still some decent riders to watch:

Israel Cycling: Hermans
Movistar: Anacona, Betancur
CCC: de la Parte, Zoidl
Dimension Data: O'Connor
Gazprom: Vlasov
+ Schelling, Thalmann, Visconti, D. Quintana and several others
 
Re:

Escarabajo said:
17.4 km @ 8.9% ouch!
6.7 km @13%. That is going to hurt.
Yeah it's always quite weird that two of the hardest climbs of the cycling season just pop up at such a small race. A few years ago they climbed the fuscher törl as well but after reaching where the finish will be this year they continued to the Edelweiß Spitze which is another 1.4 kilometers at over 10% plus the road is cobbled.
 
The race losing the 2.HC label is likely due to the calendar, resulting in few teams having interest during TDF. They should try to get Tour of Norway's (aka snoozefest) or Tour of Turkey's spots in the calendar, then more teams would come, and they would automatically get a better rating imho.
 
Re: Re:

Gigs_98 said:
Escarabajo said:
17.4 km @ 8.9% ouch!
6.7 km @13%. That is going to hurt.
Yeah it's always quite weird that two of the hardest climbs of the cycling season just pop up at such a small race. A few years ago they climbed the fuscher törl as well but after reaching where the finish will be this year they continued to the Edelweiß Spitze which is another 1.4 kilometers at over 10% plus the road is cobbled.
There's also the Fuji hillclimb at the Tour of Japan, which is likewise an annual event just as Austria repeats the same mountains despite having one of the biggest gluts of HC mountains in the world.
 

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