Stage 16: Karlsruhe - Zell, 171km
Climbs:
Ebersteinberg (cat.3) 5,5km @ 5,1%
Sand (cat.1) 10,5km @ 6,5%
Schönbüch (cat.2) 5,7km @ 8,0%
Ruhestein (cat.2) 8,5km @ 6,1%
Oppenauer Steige (Zuflucht)(cat.1) 7,8km @ 8,7%
Löcherbergwasen (Schäfersfeld)(cat.2) 4,7km @ 8,9%
You may have noticed that while week 1 was all about the rouleurs, with the brutal cobbled stages to Lüneburg and Greifswald, and week 2 gave plenty of puncheur opportunities with Teufelstein, Oberhof and Saarbrücken, there have been precious little opportunities for the pure climbers thus far. They have had chances, sure, Teufelstein and Großer Feldberg being the main ones, however the race now starts to tilt in their favour. Yes, the mountains are heavily backloaded in this Rundfahrt, however I argue that the difficulty of the rouleur and puncheur stages make this more of an all-rounders' GT than usual as rouleurs and puncheurs could still be several minutes to the good on the climbers coming into this, the start of the serious mountains. After all, for all the up-and-down-all-day stages we've had, we've only had one category 1 climb all race thus far, which wasn't even in Germany (Keilberg/Klinovec in stage 7).
Departing from
Karlsruhe Palace, the seat of the two highest courts in Germany, this jagged stage features six categorised climbs, including two category 1, and bearing in mind the riders don't have a rest day so still have the Feldberg and Saarbrücken stages affecting their recovery, trouble is on the way. I have been nice enough to ease the riders into things - they get 25km flat to start proceedings before the two-stepped, comparatively simple
Ebersteinburg climb leading us into the city of
Baden-Baden, which is one of those classic picture-postcard-perfect German towns of fairytale appearance. Here it leads into an uncategorised climb (which in the first week, no doubt would have been categorised, but here is an irrelevance) before we head for our first category 1 climb in over a week, the tougher side of
Sand, out of the Bühlertal. Though the figures aren't super impressive (10km at just under 7%), it starts off as little more than false flat and slowly steepens; the steepest section is in the middle, and the final 5,5km are at 9%, maxing at 15%. However the roads are
wide, and in fairly good condition. At the summit things flatten out again and we are left with a period of uphill false flat before a very fast descent. About 10km of flat in the valley that forms between the Schwarzwald and the Vosges mountains of France follow, before the climbs start again.
It starts with
Schönbüch, a climb which
starts out on good roads at manageable gradients, but
gets nastier as it goes on. There's a stretch of 2km at 10,5% in the middle of it, while the last 500m average a mind-boggling 14%! The riders barely have time to recover from this before they're thrown into another climb, this time the much more benign, consistent 6% drag up to the
wintersport centre at
Ruhestein. This crests with 65km to go, of which the first 20 are just gradual descent. The real fun and games begin with 45km to go, when the
punishing ascent of the Oppenauer Steige, otherwise known as Zuflucht, begins. As you can see from the profile, some tough gradients there, with sections averaging 10 and 11% for a kilometre. Gradients get very, very rough here (according to the graph at Quäl dich!, it even reaches 29% briefly!!!), and the
lonely wooded roads quickly get
tougher, though there will at least be
great scenery. I would anticipate that we would see action on this climb; it is long enough and tough enough for gaps to be created that can't be brought back; one weakness however is that there are 5km of flat before the beginning of the descent into Bad Peterstal-Griesbach, which may make it easier for the less adept climbers to pull back the flyweights. The descent starts off quite steep and starts to flatten out before hitting the village of Löcherberg. Here, 22km from the stripe, is where the race needs to begin if the soft-pedalling curse has struck.
Here is the profile of the north side of Löcherbergwasen - 3,4km at 9,4% of nastiness. Then know that this isn't all; the road doesn't stop at the
Löcherbergwasen Pass, like the profile. Instead it continues over some
poor quality surfaces for another 1300 metres, slightly less steep than the first 3 kilometres, but still steep enough that the average stays at a punishing 8,9%. With just 17km from the summit to the finish, the first 5-6 of which are technical descent, there should be action here. The last 10km are very straight but are downhill false flat, which should mean that groups working together have a chance to catch a lone escapee, but as it's still descending the escapee won't blow up and be caught so easily on the way into the postcard-ready setting of Zell am Harmersbach.
Karlsruhe:
Zell:
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