The amount of climbing is similar to last year’s road race at the Worlds in Imola, but the climbs itself are different. Longer, to be precise. Which suits the pure bred climbers.
The Olympic road race is played out on an energy-sapping course with 4,865 vertical metres. The Mikuni Pass is probably going to be pivotal. The 6.5 kilometres climb at 10.6% is crested with 30 kilometres remaining before the riders plunge down to Lake Yamanaka. After 6 kilometres of racing along the shores a 2.2 kilometres climb at 4.6% takes them over the Kagosaka Pass. A long descent to the finale on the Fuji International Speedway rounds out the route.
Favourites road race Summer Olympics Tokyo:
***** Wout van Aert, David Gaudu, Primoz Roglic, Adam Yates
**** Remco Evenepoel, Michal Kwiatkowski, Tadej Pogacar, Simon Yates
*** Maximilian Schachmann, Alejandro Valverde, Richard Carapaz
** Marc Hirschi, João Almeida, Bauke Mollema, Alexey Lutsenko
* Pavel Sivakov, Nairo Quintana, Michael Woods, Sergio Higuita, Aleksandr Vlasov