Vincenzo Nibali and some of the other Italian pros ride the hardest climb on the Innsbruck Worlds course, it looks savage judging by this video from the team car.
Video Nibali rides 'hell' climb on Innsbruck World Champs course
Italian national team manager Davide Cassini has shared this clip of some of his riders riding the World Championships course. And it looks pretty savage.
The worlds are in Innsbruck, Austria, in September. Milan San Remo winner Vincenzo Nibali has already said it’s one of his big goals for the season.
And judging by the profile, below, and this clip, the course’s billing as ‘the hardest ever worlds’ does not seem exaggerated.
“The final climb looked like a mountain bike endurance race, so hard," Nibali said after he rode the course twice on a recon.
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"It will be a difficult race to manage, from power distribution to food, from the technical choices to the choice of athletes for a complete national team.
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“After seeing it on paper, I was expecting a hard route but riding it is quite another thing. Many other riders will be as surprised as I was today.
Nibali rode the course with Franco Pellizotti and Alessandro De Marchi. The Innsbruck World Champs race will be 265km, with more than 5,000 metres of climbing.
The profile for the elite men's race in Innsbruck; it is the only event that will scale the final climb.
The pro race will include seven passages of the 8km Igls climb, with is 5.7 per cent. And then before the finish there is one ascent of the Gramart climb, with gradients of up to 28 per cent.
Cassini, a former pro rider himself, agreed with Nibali's assessment of the final Innsbruck climb, nicknamed 'hell'.
"I had already seen the course but today both myself and the boys were impressed,” he said.
“There's an 8km climb to be repeated seven times, plus a final wall with inclinations that peak at 28 per cent. That says everything about the hardness of the route."
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