Oooft, what a stage this is! The peleton will be blown apart in the first two miles, with bots spread all over the place, before the last twenty three miles to the finish will basically be a lumpy thrash. I suspect that by the time this stage is over, it will feature as a leading contender in the “OMG, what was that all about?” stakes.
The rollout in the forest is steep and brutal: the first two and a bit miles climb over five hundred feet. But once you’ve crested the summit at Vladimirskoye at over two thousand feet above sea level, that’s you done about 80% of the climbing for the stage.
From the summit, the run down to Kutulik at the yellow kite starts in the forest but exits into a clearance that retains the trees on the northern edge of the highway from five miles to eight miles. The lumpy descent flattens out either side of Kutulik then there’s a lumpy up and down section to Zabituy at seventeen miles.
Seventeen down, eight to go. The lumpy nature of the descent continues as the road hangs a long right hander at nineteen miles before swinging back the other way two miles later, having crossed the railway line in between. As in the previous few stages, the road and the railway run a similar trajectory, the road running to the north until the crossing, and the opposite thereafter.
Once the route has re-established its south easterly direction, the road runs between two clumps of forest before setting up a long lumpy downhill run to the finish line.
Distance: 25 miles / 40 kilometres
Ascent: 702 feet / 214 metres
RGT Magic Road: 46D0a8DNOJzb
Max elevation: 1974 ft
Min elevation: 1487 ft
Total climbing: 701 ft
Total descent: -529 ft
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