Last year’s winner Adam Yates and third-placed Damiano Caruso return to this six-day stage race in Romandie, the French-speaking area of west Switzerland, to battle again in the region’s beautiful mountain scenery.
The 77th Tour de Romandie will cover a total of 657km and pack in over 11,000m of climbing with a time trial on stage three and summit finishes on both stages two and four at Les Marécottes and Leysin.
Favourite to repeat his victory of last year will be Adam Yates (UAE Team Emirates) who will be backed up by a strong team including Pavel Sivakov, Felix Großschartner and Juan Ayuso. Leading the challenge will be the ever improving Egan Bernal (INEOS Grenadiers) winner of the recent Giro d’Abruzzo Alexey Lutsenko (Astana Qazaqstan Team) and young French star Lenny Martinez (Groupama – FDJ).
The course isn’t just for the climbers though as with a prologue and a mid-race time trial many TT specialists are on the start sheet too including Josh Tarling and Ethan Hayter from (INEOS Grenadiers) and Rémi Cavagna (Movistar Team).
If you live in Switzerland then you can look forward to a FREE Tour de Romandie live stream in 2024. Switzerland’s SRF is set to serve up a free stream of this six-stage stage race.
Cycling fans in the U.S. can watch the 2024 Tour de Romandie on FloBikes. A subscription will set you back US$149.99 for the year or US$29.99 on a monthly basis.
Live coverage of the 2024 Tour de Romandie will be broadcast on Eurosport and Discovery+. A ‘standard’ subscription to Discovery+ which includes Eurosport’s cycling coverage will set you back £6.99 per month or £59.99 per year.
Cycling fans in the Canada can watch the 2024 Tour de Romandie on FloBikes. A subscription will set you back CAN$150 for the year or CAN$29.99 on a monthly basis.
The race starts with a very short 2.3km prologue which will be contested by the overall favorites, keen to install a pecking order early on, and the short TT specialists looking for a chance to gain a leaders jersey in a big stage race.
Stage one follows the next day and it’s a lumpy 165.7km from Château d’Oex to Fribourg which will likely end in a sprint finish, although there are very view big name sprinters on the start sheet.
Stage two is where the GC action will really kick off with two huge mountains and a summit finish at Salvan/Les Marécottes. This 10km final ascent, averaging 7.3%, has slopes maxing out at 14% so will be a proper test for the climbers.
Those same climbers will the next day have to take on the 15.5km continuously undulating time trial around Oron and utilize another skill needed to win a stage race.
Stage four from Saillon to Leysin is 151.7km and takes the riders into higher territory with five classified climbs including the 10km summit finish at the end. After this the GC battle should be stitched up with just the laps around Vernier to contend with on the final stage which will likely end in a sprint.
