Important stage for sprinters and fight for Green Jersey!
Stage 2 is a very fast and fairly easy stage with lots of sprint points to grab. 5 laps of Innsbruck ring does not offer any climbing challenge and there are no KOM points, which means that climbers may have an easy day since this is one of two stages without KOM points in 9 week serié. The course is fairly easy, altho it has a short leg snapper, a 400m drag with an 8% gradient which is a regular lunch pad for attacks, but it is not long or steep enough to put any alert sprinter into trouble. However, what is challenging is a combination of leg snapper and intermediate sprint banner very close together. If someone is in trouble or too deep in red numbers over the snapper, he might have trouble with sprint because there is very little time to recover. Do the pressure once, twice, three times in the row, and first cracks might appear. For those who are targeting Green jersey, this stage is very important. It has 30 points to offer with 5 intermediate sprints and one final at the finish line. For a capable sprinter, that’s a lot of points to grab and to accumulate a bit of lead, so he can go safely over the next few stages with Green jersey on shoulders. But on the other side, super hard sprint efforts bring also a lot of possibilities for an ambush too. If someone smart and strong enough counter-attacks the field after sprints there is a huge chance for a break. And if an unexpected break goes out, they might harvest sprint points on their way just as well and yellow jersey can change shoulders as well too. So, the sprinters need to be extremely alert in this stage not to end up with very little payout and the yellow jersey has to be up there all the time. And not only all the time, at the final sprint too. Since the finish is pancake flat, and there is quite a chance for a large group to come into final straight, it is very possible that the yellow jersey might finish on the shoulders of someone fast enough.
From stage 2 onwards, our Dress code comes to effect. Please read it carefully and don’t forget: fight for the Jersey!
Categories 
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will do 5 laps which is 44 km all together and categories 
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will do 4 laps, 35km altogether.
Race happens on Sunday at 10.30 CET (10.30 AM CET)
Here is the VeloViewer 3D map of the course.
Have you ridden the course before? The easiest way is to check the segment in your Strava account.