Male Team 27 Apr - 02 May
Tour de Romandie
682 Kilometers 6 Stages
Eurosport 2 and GCN will broadcast the race live everyday at 3.30pm.
There will be bonus seconds at the finish of all four road stages (10-6-4″), yet not at intermediate sprints.
The Movistar Team returns to Switzerland, two years after their last race to date on Helvetic soil, for the 74th Tour de Romandie, which has been, in previous decades, the perfect transition between the big classics / spring events and the stageraces that dominate the scene as of May. A feeling further accentuated for the Blues as Marc Soler leads the Telefónica-backed outfit, just before the Giro, while Miguel Ángel López makes his debut.
It will be a really traditional race in terms of route configuration. There will be two time trials: the opening prologue in Oron (Tuesday 27th), just over 4km with a tough final 900m at 7%; and the decisive, 16km route around Fribourg (Sunday 2nd), with a cobbled, early slope before a last, short kick at 6%.
Between them, the parcours offers three hilly stages -a circuit in Aigle and Martigny (Wednesday 28th); the climb of La Vue-des-Alpes (Cat-1) en route to Saint-Imier (Thursday 29th); two categorized ascents just before Estavayer’s finish (Friday 30th)- and a Queen stage in the big mountains (Saturday 1st), finishing atop Thyon 2000.