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Tour de Pologne 2020

I think the first WorldTour stage race after the COVID-19 break deserves a thread. :)

The Tour de Pologne starts tomorrow!

For some reason I can't seem to insert the stage profiles but there seem to be three stages for sprinters and two for GC (https://www.procyclingstats.com/race/tour-de-pologne/2020/stage-1/stages/all-stage-profiles).

Another Evenepoel win? The parcours seems to contain more punchy hills than long climbs so I'd think this is (slightly) less up his alley. Schachmann, Fuglsang and Yates are probably bigger favourites considering the nature of the course unless there's a day where the race is hard enough for Evenepoel to just power away from everybody.

Although I'm rooting for Evenepoel, I'd say Schachmann to win the GC.

There should be some interesting sprint battles as well with Ackermann, Groenewegen and Jakobsen.
 
I think Kraków pays money to have the finish of the last stage there. The race director is very limited with the route choices because he needs the money the cities/towns pay to be included for the race to be sustainable, but there are few of them that can afford it and want to do that and many of them are too far away from any significant climbs to have good stages finishing there. And they, of course, vastly prefer a stage finish to a stage start because it gives much more exposure.

The route this year is really uninspiring and stage 4 will likely be the only one with any GC action unless something crazy happens.
 
I think Kraków pays money to have the finish of the last stage there. The race director is very limited with the route choices because he needs the money the cities/towns pay to be included for the race to be sustainable, but there are few of them that can afford it and want to do that and many of them are too far away from any significant climbs to have good stages finishing there. And they, of course, vastly prefer a stage finish to a stage start because it gives much more exposure.

The route this year is really uninspiring and stage 4 will likely be the only one with any GC action unless something crazy happens.

I did think that could be the reason.
 
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it's also a pretty good course for Knox, who likes those punchy climbs. Yesterday Evenepoel said "We'll all need to pay close attention at every stage of the race. I will give everything I have to support the Wolfpack" - so although he may still end up winning, it's probably not a major goal for him indeed.
 

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