The 2020 Tour de Pologne will pit the likes of on-song Deceuninck-QuickStep star Remco Evenepoel, Wout Poels (Bahrain McLaren), Simon Yates (Mitchelton-Scott), Jakob Fuglsang (Astana) and 2019 Giro d’Italia champion Richard Carapaz (Team Ineos) against each other, with two mountain stages expected to decide the overall winner of the Polish five-day race, which starts in Chorzów on Wednesday.
Although the WorldTour race maintained its same location as the previous calendar in early August, it was reduced from seven stages to five, from August five to 9.
This year’s race will not forget The driving force of Soudal Soudal Bjorg Lambrecht, who died after crashing the third level of last year’s race between Chorzw and Zabrze, despite desperate attempts to rescue him at the closure of Rybnik Hospital.
Lambrecht, who was only 22 years old and widely regarded as one of the next climbing stars in Belgium, will be remembered before Level 1 at Chorzw on Wednesday, precisely one year after his death, while his career number, 143, was permanently spared from The Race as a mark of respect.
Evenepoel starts as the favourite of the race, despite the older and more experienced runners that the Belgian of 20 years will face.
He ruled last week’s Vuelta a Burgos and, in addition to the Volta ao Algarve and the Vuelta en San Juan, which he won before the interruption of COVID-19 cycling, means he won 3 races in 3 stages in 2020. He’s going to know if he needs to keep this 100% record, he downplayed his chances when he spoke to reporters before the Tour of Poland on Tuesday.
“The stages are difficult, but they’re like genuine ascents like in Burgos,” Evenepoel said.
“It means it’s not for my advantage, but it’s not bad either because if you look at the course of stages 3 and 4, they’re a bit like the Ardennes Classics. If you need to win the GC, then you have to be smart in the scenes.”
Could it also be the race in which we see sprinter Mark Cavendish (Bahrain McLaren) making a comeback to do his best?
In last week’s Vuelta a Burgos, he finished 13th on the level 2 organization board that saw Fernando Gaviria of the United Arab Emirates team win, with a complicated positioning after a grand climb and a descent towards the finish.
Cavendish will once again face the fierce festival in Poland in the form of Deceuninck-QuickStep’s Fabio Jakobsen and Jumbo-Visma’s Dylan Groenewegen, in particular, but the British driver will have two and three opportunities to take on his rivals.
As indicated through Evenepoel, stages 3 and four, Friday and Saturday, will be those in which the climbers will be in the foreground, while stages 1 and 2 will be the goal of the sprinters.
Far from the fifth and final stage on Sunday being just a procession into Krakow, the first half of the 188km stage features one first-category and two second-category climbs, and only then is there a flatter run into Poland’s second city.
If things are still close at this level, which tend to be in such a short level of races, there may be early fireworks as groups go out to gain an advantage and protect the overall positions of their leaders.
Cyclingnews will bring you reports, effects and news from this year’s Polish Tour, which you can watch live, anywhere, with ExpressVPN.
Stage 1: Silesia Stadium, Chorzw – Katowice, 19 five.8 km – Wednesday 5th Of August
Stage 2: Opole – Zabrze, 151.5 km – Thursday 6 August
Step 3: Wadowice – Bielsko-Biala, 203.1 km – Friday 7 August
Stage 4: Bukovina Resort – Bukowina Tatrza-ska, 173 km – Saturday August
Stage 5: Zakopane – Krakow, 188 km – Sunday nine August
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