Tirreno-Adriatico, March 7-13, 2.UWT

[dick the quick]

Alert - Tirreno ahead!

Route:
This year, the race organizers arranged for a perfectly symetric route design: TTT => flat => hilly/HTF => MTF => hilly/HTF => flat => ITT.

Stage 1: Lido di Camaiore - Lido di Camaiore, 21 km (TTT)
Same route as in the previous years. And the same usual suspects to get a stage win: BMC, Sunweb, Sky...

Stage 2: Camaiore - Follonica, 172 km
Relatively short and flat stage for the sprinters, with the only climb at the very beginning just to distribute the mountain jersey to one of the possible early breakaway contenders.

Stage 3: Follonica - Trevi, 239 km
Extra long, hilly stage with a spectacular murito at the very (very) end.

The final circuit in Trevi (to be ridden twice) is designed in the way that the finish line is just at the top of a 1,5-kilometer long climb, with the last 500m being the steepest. In addition, the road is very narrow.

Stage 4: Foligno - Sarnano Sassotetto, 213 km
As usual, the only MTF is in the very middle of the race.

The final climb of the day:

But what is potentially more interesting, it is the profile of the stage before the final climb starts. From the kilometer 60 onwards, it seems to be a "not-a-single-kilometer-flat" terrain, extremely rolling, with a sequence of short and steep climbs and downhills.

Stage 5: Castelraimondo - Filottrano, 178 km
Another one hilly stage finishing in the home town of Michele Scarponi.

Like in case of stage 2, this one also should be decided on the final laps in Filottrano providing for the major difficulty of the day - Muro di Fillotrano (passed three times). However, this time the design of the final kilometers is different: from the top of the murito, there are almost 3 kilometers left (a descent, then a 1,5-kilometer long uphill drag to the finish line, with some steeper sections near to the end.

Stage 6: Numana - Fano, 153 km
Short stage beginning with more than 100 kilometers of a rolling hilly terrain, but with a more than 30-kilometer long flat section at the end. Sprinter teams should have enough time to catch the breakaway and to organize their trains. GC guys should wait for the final battle against the clock on the next day.

Stage 7: San Benedetto del Tronto - San Benedetto del Tronto, 10 km (ITT)
Exactly the same route as over few last years. One of pure specialists should take this one.

Startlist:
Full startlist available here: https://www.procyclingstats.com/race/tirreno-adriatico/2018/startlist

Teams and notable riders:
Ag2R (Bardet, Geniez)
Astana (Lopez, Lutsenko)
Bahrain (Nibali, Pozzovivo, Colbrelli)
BMC (GvA, Caruso, Dennis)
Bora (P.Sagan, Majka, Formolo)
Dimension Data (Cavendish, Meintjes, Boasson Hagen)
EF (Uran, Modolo, Vanmarcke)
Groupama-FdJ
Gazprom
Israel Cycling (Hermans, Sbaragli)
Katusha (Spilak, Kittel, Martin)
LottoNL-Jumbo (Bennett, Roglic, van Poppel)
Lotto-Soudal (Benoot, Marczyński)
Mitchelton (A.Yates, Ewan)
Movistar (Landa, Amador)
Nippo (Cunego, Canola)
Quickstep (Gaviria, Jungels, Gilbert, Stybar)
Sky (Froome, Thomas, Kwiatkowski, Moscon)
Sunweb (Dumoulin, Kelderman)
Trek
UAE (Aru, Ulissi)
Wilier (Pozzato, Mareczko)

 

[Samamba]

Benoot to win the GC.

 

[Alexandre B.]

Bardet to channel his inner Peyragudes in Trevi (that's some gradients).

 

[Laplaz]

The central part of stage 4 is just wow :surprised:

 

[May0maniac]

Re:

The central part of stage 4 is just wow :surprised:

And then they waste it with a MTF.
Vegni seems to prefer a big MTF to a traditional awesome hilly T-A stage and that's a shame.

 

[Escarabajo]

Looks like a promising race with contenders and parcours!

 

[Son of Amsterhammer]

Should be really good.

 

[yaco]

A.Yates is surrounded by a sprint team - It will be a long season for Adam.

 

[portugal11]

stage 3 is just horrible. it is like fleche wallonne with 30 km more

 

[Krokro]

I find stages 3 to 5 really nice and promising on paper!
Sky with a monster team.. Thomas ftw?

 

[rune1107]

Route looks nice. Hopefully we get some good racing from it, but I could easily see it being ridden quite conservative. Going Bardet for the GC

 

[Krokro]

Too many TT for the lightweight imo. Except Sky, I'd rate high the likes of Keldermann, Nibali, Dumoulin and even Amador.
EDIT: OK it's only 30km in total. But still not favoring Bardet, Aru or Landa for example.

 

[Jungle Cycle]

i guess Thomas ftw..
i hope will have as much fun as Fermo last year..

 

[Pricey_sky]

Quite an interesting route, the short, sharp climb to Trevi is brutal but they should have put the MTF the day after and left stage 4 as a 180(ish)km stage, with the finish at the end of that sequence of hills.

I think Froome will follow his plan of last year, if he's going to be competitive in 2 GT's his build up will be low-key again, Thomas has a good chance.

Expecting a good show from Bardet, Landa and Nibali, although they will obviously be inconvenienced by at least one of the TTT and ITT.

Not sure if Dumoulin aims to arrive here in good shape and challenge?

 

[TourOfSardinia]

Yeah Cunego!

 

[tobydawq]

Michal Kwiatkowski will win this bike race.

 

[Nirvana]

Stage 4 would be great without the MTF, way better "tappa dei muri" than the following day.

 

[yaco]

So we have an ITT and a TTT, along with 2 sprint stages, one sort of mountain stage and two puncher stages - I fear this could be over after stage 1.

 

[Bushman]

Thomas the big favourite for the overall. Kwiat could potentially win too but I feel like his climbing is always a bit of a question mark.

Lopez will win the MTF.

 

[fauniera]

Lopez has a good chance to win the overall, i think.

Rigo will be handicapped by his teams performance in the TTT, i'm afraid.

 

[Dekker_Tifosi]

Re:

Quite an interesting route, the short, sharp climb to Trevi is brutal but they should have put the MTF the day after and left stage 4 as a 180(ish)km stage, with the finish at the end of that sequence of hills.

I think Froome will follow his plan of last year, if he's going to be competitive in 2 GT's his build up will be low-key again, Thomas has a good chance.

Expecting a good show from Bardet, Landa and Nibali, although they will obviously be inconvenienced by at least one of the TTT and ITT.

Not sure if Dumoulin aims to arrive here in good shape and challenge?

Dumoulin will start as leader, with Kelderman in a co-leader kinda role.
However I think he's not in the same shape as last year in this period and don't expect him to do well.

 

[SafeBet]

I can't see anyone beating Tom if he's in good shape.
But as DT said that's a bit of a question mark. Sky ftw.

 

[Red Rick]

Re: Re:

The central part of stage 4 is just wow :surprised:

And then they waste it with a MTF.
Vegni seems to prefer a big MTF to a traditional awesome hilly T-A stage and that's a shame.

Can we get a stage finish transplant, the last 35km and we should be golden

And I still want to get rid of that TTT.

 

[Rollthedice]

1. Thomas 2. Kwiat 3. Froome

 

[Valv.Piti]

Re:

1. Thomas 2. Kwiat 3. Froome

Not unrealistic at all, altho I don't think Froome will be that strong really.