Listen, the climbing hasn\u2019t exactly been shy this week, but Saturday\u2019s stage in the Tour de Romandie turns the dial all the way up. It\u2019s a relentless mountain test, stacking multiple long climbs through the day before a final ascent that comes close enough to the finish to really matter.<\/p>\n
Stage 4 starts tough, ends tougher<\/p>\n
The early part of the stage already asks plenty of the boys in Switzerland. There two steep climbs coming in quick succession to wear things down. There\u2019s a brief breather after that, but it\u2019s more reset than recovery. Once the race hits the final phase, the road rises again for a sustained climb that should force the contenders into the open.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s where UAE\u2019s Tadej Poga\u010dar could make it count. I mean, not that he doesn\u2019t make it count every day, but Saturday could see him extend his lead big time.<\/p>\n
With only a short run to Charmey after the summit, any move here has a real chance to decide the race.<\/p>\n
Pogi\u2019s run<\/p>\n
He\u2019s already taken two wins in the Swiss stage race. Actually, wanna hear something wild? The world champion has raced nine times this year. Of those, he\u2019s six of them. Paris-Roubiax, he could only manage second. The lowest he\u2019s been was sixth in the prologue at Romandie\u2013which is his first go at the discipline. Bear in mind, he had just raced (and won) the brutally hard Li\u00e8ge-Bastogne-Li\u00e8ge 48 hours earlier. At Romandie, he won in the mountains, as well in a sprint out of a four-man breakaway.<\/a><\/p>\n Even yesterday, during a proper bunch sprint, he took fourth.<\/p>\n Oakville, Ont.\u2019s Michael Leonard is currently sitting 23rd overall. Saturday is the penultimate stage of the Tour of Romandie. Sunday\u2019s stage isn\u2019t actually easy either. It\u2019s no flat run on the final day of racing. Stage 5 goes from Lucens to Leysin for a total of 178.2km and finishes on a nasty 10km summit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen, the climbing hasn\u2019t exactly been shy this week, but Saturday\u2019s stage in the Tour de Romandie turns…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":645009,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[569],"tags":[64,63,784,85,6494,309526],"class_list":["post-645008","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cycling","tag-sports","tag-tadej-pogacar","tag-tour-of-romandie"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/645008","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=645008"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/645008\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/645009"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=645008"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=645008"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=645008"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}