TakeWorlds3 weeks ago
The 2027 Worlds road race returns to Sallanches for the first time since 1980, but the course is no nostalgia lap. Twenty ascents of the Côte de Domancy pack 5,700 metres of climbing into 265 km — 300 metres more than Kigali 2025, already the hardest Worlds course in recent memory. This isn't a route for tactics. It's a route that eliminates anyone who isn't a pure climber.
The Côte de Domancy itself runs just 2.5 km at 9.4% average, spiking to 16% — repeated twenty times, that's not a selective climb, it's an attritional one. Haute-Savoie Mont-Blanc 2027 will be the fourth straight year the Worlds hands the rainbow jersey to a climber's course. Where Sallanches 1980 crowned Bernard Hinault and Beth Heiden, the organisers in 2027 have built something steeper than the original they're honoring.
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