La Grande Béroche > La Grande Béroche 157km This is a different looking stage; I like what the organisers have done here. Tough at the start, tough in the middle and a flat finale, I have no idea how this is going to play out.

Eschborn > Frankfurt am Main 198km The 62nd edition of the race, but will we ever get another German winner? John Degenkolb was the last one and that was all the way back in 2011, there’s a couple of pretenders to his throne. It’s the same route as the last two years, one that should suit the attackers.

Marmaris > Aydin 151km Today’s lesson is clear, never cycling in Turkey when it’s raining! Lots of crashes before a good win for Wout Poels, we’ll have to see which riders are carrying injuries for the rest of the race.

Münchenstein > Fribourg 194km You can’t beat a bit of banter from the organisers, the stage starts with 1.8km at 10.9%! Pretty weird really, I can’t recall seeing something like that before in a stage like this. Once things settle down, we’ll have to see if any of the GC teams fancy upsetting the sprint teams on the hilly section.

Marmaris > Akyaka (Kiran) 115km The big GC stage in this year’s Tour of Turkey, the winner will likely win GC come Sunday. The final climb is a leg breaker, and it’s a new one for the race, expect to see huge gaps on GC.

Fethiye > Marmaris 176km Simon Dehairs took his first pro win in the opening stage, today it was his teammate, Tibor Del Grosso, doing the same thing, do they have any else who wants to take their first win? The stage ends in Marmaris, a popular finishing town for the race, where some of the best sprinters in the world have tasted success, but what’s going to happen this year?

Saint-Imier > Saint-Imier 3.5km ITT The race starts with a short prologue, it’s only 3468m in length. Gaps will be small, and the distance should favour prologue experts and/or track riders.

It’s the Tour de Romandie, which means I get to have my yearly rant about why a race with six stages has two fucking ITTs! I’m not a big fan of TTs, I can just about stomach one per race, Tour de Romandie always feels like it’s sticking in the knife and wiggling it around. Rant over for another year, time to look at the route.

Kemer > Kalkan 168km Simon Dehairs got his first pro win in the opening stage, thanks to a brilliant sprint and a wonderful lead out from his team. Stage 2 is a much harder day, this route has been used as the 2nd stage in the last two editions, both times ending in a sprint. Jasper Philipsen won in 2023 and Max Kanter was first home last year, you need a lot of grunt to win this one.

Antalya > Antalya 132km The first stage of the Tour of Turkey is a nailed-on bunch sprint.