It is becoming more and more difficult to organise races in Switzerland: acceptation by populations/authorities, exploding costs, introduction of women races... In Romandie, they cancelled the women race; here, it is the men race which suffers: from 8 days last years (and even 9 a few years ago) it is now reduced to 5 days (only 4 in Switzerland as the 1^st^ one take place entirely in Italy), the total distance is divided by 2, and all stages are circuits, or more exactly loops, only the last one is an actual circuit.
The women stages are in the mornings, the men races in the afternoon.
Riders (men)
Pogatchar (🇸🇮 UAE) continues his mission, coming on races he hasn't already won to fix this mistake. There won't be much competition for General Classification, as Pidcock cancelled his participation: L. Martinez (🇫🇷 Bahrain), M. Schmid (🇨🇠Jayco), Roglitch (🇸🇮 Bora), and perhaps Riccitello (🇺🇸 Decathlon) or Tiberi (🇮🇹 Bahrain) if they finally feel better. We may get interested in what the 3^rd^ Bahrain rider, Eulalio🇵🇹, can do here after his great Tour of Italy.
There will be a greater competition among punchers. In addition to some puncher-climbers I already quoted, we shall see Van der Poel (🇳🇱 Alpecin), Grégoire (🇫🇷 FDJ), Narvaez (🇪🇨 UAE) and others.
Stages
Not a single one reaches 160 km...
Stage 1, Wednesday 17, the Sondrio loop
A punchers' stage going back and forth in an Italian valley.
Stage 2, Thursday 18, the Locarno loop
A pure punchers' stage.
Stage 3, Friday 19, the Bad Ragaz loop
The sprinters' stage, unless a few teams want to make their life hard in the first half of the stage. After all, this stage presents basically as much elevation as the first two stages.
Stage 4, Saturday 20, the AArburg loop
The Individual Time Trial, very much flat, 24 km.
Stage 5, Sunday 21, the Villars/Ollon circuit
This final stage is a hard mountain stage. A climb of almost 20 km (!) is repeated 3 times with 0 flat in between: you go up by one road, you go down by another road which ends directly where the first one restarts, and so on. The start/finish point is not on top nor at the bottom, but at about 2/3 of the climb, which mean the departure starts with a 4 km climb at 9 %. 😱
