Stage 2: Cesenatico to Bologne – 199.2 km
Date: Sunday June 30, 2024
Streaming: 🇺🇸 Peacock/🇨🇦 FloBikes/🇬🇧 Discovery+/ITV/🇪🇺 Eurosport/🇦🇺 SBS
Estimated finish time: 🇺🇸🇨🇦 11:19 am EDT/🇬🇧 4:19 pm BST/🇪🇺 5:19 pm CEST/🇦🇺 1:19 am AEST
Stage type: Hilly
Summary: The second stage of the Tour, much like the first, will favor the more versatile riders in the peloton. Two late trips up the steep (10.6%) Côte de San Luca on the run-in to Bologna will be too hard for the purer sprinters, but at just 1.9 km long it won’t favor the pure climbers either. In any case, the GC riders will be on alert.
Fantasy favorites: A break has a chance on this stage, but it could prove too tempting for the big names to let any escapees stay away, especially after a select bunch was denied on stage 1. Although the accumulated climbing does not look too intense, that double-digit climb near the finish should provide the Ardennes types with a great launching pad. Tadej Pogačar is again the stage favorite, with Primož Roglič, Tom Pidcock, Maxim Van Gils, and Wout van Aert as solid bets to be in the mix as well. Even if the race is brought back together for the flat finish, it’s unlikely that any of the pure sprinters will have survived, but a rider like Michael Matthews, Magnus Cort, Mads Pedersen, or Mathieu van der Poel could be there.
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