On the five following sections there are three mountain finishes, two times a more classic profile awaits the 19 starting teams. The finale is in the Tyrolean winter sports resort of Kühtai. A total of 805 kilometers and 14,156 meters of altitude will be covered from July 2nd to 7th. The local aces are hungry for success. St. Pölten/Vienna. While the stages had been presented in bits last year, on Monday in the Lower Austrian capital the announcement was made all at once. The pedaling takes place parallel to the first week of the Tour de France, the starting signal for the loop in Austria falls on July 2nd with a 3,000 meter long prologue in St. Pölten. “Cycling you can touch,” announced tour director Thomas Pupp, the start and finish are located at Rathausplatz. Lower Austria’s state capital will host the tour for the seventh time, as Mayor Matthias Stadler (SPÖ) calculated.
After the short gallop, there is the first regular stage on a 175 kilometer circuit in the area around Bad Tatzmannsdorf in Burgenland. The second section runs from the pilgrimage site of Maria Taferl/Lower Austria to Steyr in Upper Austria and, like stage one, tends to suit classic riders. Lower Austria’s state vice-president Udo Landbauer (FPÖ) announced on Monday “great atmosphere” like at last year’s final on Sonntagberg. Climbers will be really challenged for the first time in the 2024 edition on July 5th. Stage three leads from Schladming to St. Johann in Salzburg, including the mountain finish at the Geistberg.
The following day, Kals am Großglockner is the stage destination of the Austrian cycle tour for the third time, following 1975 and 1982. The classic Glockner stage runs over 151 kilometers and has its starting point in St. Johann. On the final day, the 143 kilometer route from Kufstein to the winter sports resort of Kühtai is on the program in Tyrol. There will also be a reunion with parts of the route that were already ridden at the Innsbruck Cycling World Championships 2018. The final climb, which is more than 20 kilometers long, is peppered with 1,400 meters of altitude. If the organizers have their way, the race should remain open until then in terms of the overall classification. “We have structured it so that the decision will only be made on this stage,” plans tour director Pupp.
The team bosses from Hrinkow Advarics, Felt-Felbermayr, Team Vorarlberg, Tirol KTM and WSA Graz are once once more running the Tour of Austria this year with the long-time Vienna Marathon organizer Wolfgang Konrad. For ÖRV President Harald Mayer, the restart in 2023 was “successful” and the path should now be continued. This time, 19 teams with seven riders each will start in the UCI category 2.1 loop. Already announced are the WorldTeams Ineos-Grenadiers (from which last year’s winner Jhonatan Narvaez came from Ecuador), UAE Team Emirates, Jayco Alula and Alpecin-Deceuninck, for which the Austrian Tobias Bayer (“I definitely want to be there”) is also in the group pedals.
In general, the local athletes want to be at the forefront at the beginning of July. After six years with the World Tour Team Bahrain, Hermann Pernsteiner is now racing for the Felt-Felbermayr Continental racing team. The Tour of Austria is the 33-year-old’s declared goal for the season. A place in the top five in the final ranking “would be really good”, for a podium place “everything has to be perfect,” said the second place in the 2018 Austrian cycling tour during the stage presentation. Given the competition from WorldTeams, “we have to leave the church in the village.” Martin Messner (WSA), 14th overall in his debut in 2023. best Austrian, but doesn’t want to commit to a specific result goal yet. In any case, the ride from the previous year, which crowned “an incredible week” for Messner, should have a motivating effect.
