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ALBUFEIRA » ALBUFEIRA – 22 km (Individual Time Trial) 17/02/2024 – Saturday

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20 - 20 May 2024

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Inside the renovation that couldn’t fail at Colonial Country Club 

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FORT WORTH, Texas – It was a late-June morning and the sun was well below the horizon when Rich McIntosh, Oscar Lazaro and Josh McFadden piled into a small, dimly lit trailer at the center of Colonial Country Club.  

The men sat around a plastic folding table, analyzing a large map of the course and planning the day ahead. Filled with markings and highlights, the map showed tangible progress that was hard to grasp when looking at the setting that surrounded them. The historic Colonial Country Club, where Ben Hogan once ruled, barely looked like a golf course. Every blade of grass on the back nine was gone. Only giant mounds of dirt remained. The front nine would soon look the same.  

Lazaro, the lead man for LaBar Golf Renovations, discussed plans to fortify drain lines near the 15th tee and 17th green. McFadden, one of the shapers, had work to do on the 12th fairway, adjusting sightlines that would affect the tee shot. McIntosh, Colonial’s director of agronomy and project manager for the renovation, directed traffic. Other crews were ready to laser-scan the front nine greens and prep for the demo. 

“Another busy day,” Lazaro said.  

There would be many more like it. Still 10 months from their deadline, a quiet intensity loomed over every decision and action. Crews began ripping up Colonial less than 24 hours after Emiliano Grillo beat Adam Schenk in a playoff to claim the 2023 Charles Schwab Challenge, and they did so with an ambitious directive: fully renovate one of the most historic courses in America in time for the PGA TOUR’s annual visit the following May.  

A project of such scale normally takes at least 18 months to complete; Colonial had little less than a year, though. As the venue for the Charles Schwab Challenge since 1946, Colonial hosts the longest-running TOUR event held annually at the same site. The club had no intention of interrupting that streak. The renovation had to fit its schedule.  

Gil Hanse, the renowned architect in charge of restoring the 1936 Perry Maxwell design, had worked under similar time constraints only a handful of times before. Each of those had more favorable growing seasons. Colonial’s renovation banked on the course surviving the winter.  

Hanse, McIntosh and their teams had spent the last year with those stakes as their backdrop. The $20 million renovation, designed to reinvigorate the classic design and maintain Colonial’s reputation as one of the top clubs in the country, was accompanied by an unforgiving timeline. The world would know if the course wasn’t ready, and there would be no time for adjustments. The pros playing Colonial this week are the first to play the course. Members won’t play it for another month.  

“When you have a deadline like this, you really can’t fail,” Hanse said. “There’s so much riding on it.”

For weeks, Colonial's fairways looked like thoroughfares in Texas’ scorching, late-summer sun.  

McIntosh set an Oct. 1 deadline to re-sod the entire course. That would give the roots enough time to catch the underlying soil before winter hit. The grass wouldn't survive the cold conditions if given too short of a growing window. But installation doesn’t just happen over a few days. Crews laid down 118 acres of grass, the equivalent of more than 89 football fields. It took somewhere between 600-650 trucks to carry in every piece of sod, McIntosh said, and crews could only install about 10 trucks worth of sod a day.  

Simple math meant they needed to budget about two months for turf installation, which meant any work to the underlying ground – irrigation, new hydronic systems in the greens or significant changes to the terrain – had to be completed in the three months prior.  

From June to October, the project could hardly afford any hiccups. If one critical piece of the puzzle was delayed, it could throw off the whole plan. The margin for error was slim. McIntosh had previously worked on renovations at Torrey Pines and Muirfield Village, but those were nothing compared to Colonial.

“It's one of the biggest and tightest timeline projects anywhere,” he said. “I haven't been a part of something where we've completely redone everything and moved the amount of dirt that we have.” 

It was an unnerving proposition for every party, including the membership. Longtime Colonial member Ryan Palmer, who’s won four times in 21 seasons on the PGA TOUR, was entrenched in the renovation talks from the beginning.  

“It was shocking, to be honest with you,” Palmer said of the proposed timeline.  

“We couldn’t miss,” McIntosh said.  

That was clear in more ways than one. In 2008, Keith Foster partially renovated Colonial, but the membership quickly realized it didn’t go far enough in restoring the course to its original Perry Maxwell design. Within eight years, the club was mulling its options, uninterested in half-measures. They needed to do it right this time, and could ill afford to go back to the drawing board again. This renovation needed to set them up for decades.  

That led Colonial to Hanse, who they believed could meet their standards. And schedule.

A mutual friend connected club executives with Hanse in 2016, when he was re-doing the Black Course at the Streamsong Resort in central Florida. Colonial’s membership took some convincing, though. Especially Palmer, who infamously spent an entire evening grilling Hanse on his previous renovation work, hoping to get some clarity about the architect’s design philosophy and his plans for Colonial.

Hanse’s vision eventually won over the members, including the PGA TOUR winner in their midst, but figuring out when the renovation would happen took much longer than expected. The COVID-19 pandemic and ensuing supply chain issues, which would have jeopardized the short timeline, delayed the project.

Waiting proved wise, as the project went through without any snafus.  

The greens were finished by Sept. 1, 2023, and the final piece of sod was planted in the first week of November. They hit every mark, yet they still weren’t in the clear.  

The weather was the last hurdle. The renovation team did everything right, but the course was susceptible if the Dallas-Fort Worth area had a harsh winter. An extended freeze could thwart all the growing progress that was made in the fall. McIntosh was alarmed by a five-day freeze in January that left the entire course dormant, but the winter remained mostly mild from there. Three weeks before the Charles Schwab Challenge, the greens looked “immaculate,” he said, with only a few patchy fairway areas left to clean up.  

“I'd be lying if I said I was 100% confident we'd be standing here three weeks from now getting ready for a golf tournament on a perfectly presented golf course,” Hanse said. “The vast majority of the space is ready to go.” 

Hanse was always the man for the job.

Before being hired by Colonial, he’d established himself as the go-to architect for prestigious clubs seeking to breathe life into aging layouts and bring them back to their golden age. Several of the top courses in the country had already entrusted Hanse to rejuvenate their courses and restore the vision of the original architect. Hanse was known for not forcing a new philosophy onto these historic grounds; instead, he mined the club’s history to uncover what made the course great, then worked to bring that vision back to life while making it fit into the modern game.

Hanse has restored three of the last four U.S. Open host sites – The Los Angeles Country Club, The Country Club in Brookline (Massachusetts) and Winged Foot Golf Club in Mamaroneck, New York – along with the 2022 PGA Championship venue, Southern Hills Country Club in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Hanse’s resume also includes restorations at Oakmont, Merion, The Olympic Club and Baltusrol, all of which are slated to host upcoming majors.

Hanse and business partner Jim Wagner are best known for their vast Rolodex of restoration and renovation projects, though they do have several notable original designs, including Fields Ranch East at the PGA of America’s headquarters in Frisco, Texas, the Olympic Golf Course used in the 2016 Rio De Janeiro Games, Scotland’s Castle Stuart Golf Links, Pinehurst No. 4, Boston Golf Club and Rustic Canyon Golf Course in California.

Unsurprisingly, Hanse was at the top of Colonial’s wish list. The club also had the ideal piece of history to help Hanse develop his plan – a program from the 1941 U.S. Open at Colonial. It quickly became Hanse’s north star and the key to unlocking the Colonial of yesteryear.  

An aerial view of Colonial in the program from the 1941 U.S. Open at Colonial. (Credit Colonial Country Club)

Holes 1 and 2 in the program from the 1941 U.S. Open at Colonial. (Credit Colonial Country Club)

Holes 3 and 4 in the program from the 1941 U.S. Open at Colonial. (Credit Colonial Country Club)

Holes 5 and 6 in the program from the 1941 U.S. Open at Colonial. (Credit Colonial Country Club)

Holes 7 and 8 in the program from the 1941 U.S. Open at Colonial. (Credit Colonial Country Club)

Holes 9 and 10 in the program from the 1941 U.S. Open at Colonial. (Credit Colonial Country Club)

Holes 11 and 12 in the program from the 1941 U.S. Open at Colonial. (Credit Colonial Country Club)

Holes 13 and 14 in the program from the 1941 U.S. Open at Colonial. (Credit Colonial Country Club)

Holes 15 and 16 in the program from the 1941 U.S. Open at Colonial. (Credit Colonial Country Club)

The program had photos of every hole and detailed a rugged Colonial much more in tune with the natural landscape. Over the years, those ragged edges were sharpened as the prevailing course conditioning trends in the '80s and '90s shifted to clean lines and neatly tended greenery. The course was perfectly coiffed but lacked the gritty character of the original design. Returning the course to its rustic roots became top of mind. 

The program also declared Colonial’s par 3s some of the best in the world. That prestige was eroded over the decades as members and pros found the par 3s slowly morphed into one-dimensional holes, with most requiring almost the exact same club and shot shape. That gave Hanse another objective.  

The skeleton key that helped unlock all of it was the discovery that water hazards were much more prevalent in the 1940s. That led to some of the biggest changes to Colonial.  

A view of Colonial Country Club during the 1941 U.S. Open. (Courtesy USGA Museum)

A view of the ninth hole during the 1941 U.S. Open at Colonial Country Club, Fort Worth, Texas. (Courtesy USGA Museum)

“(The program) talked about all the water holes that Colonial has,” Hanse said. “When I first got here, I thought, ‘Well, there aren't that many of them,’ really (No.) 9, obviously 13. But then as you start to really look at the landscape and the way the water used to run through the landscape, it became much more apparent that, you know, 16, 17, 10, all these areas, 11, eight had water being an integral part of them.” 

Hanse’s most noticeable change came at the par-3 eighth, which used to have the Trinity River running tight along its right side.

The original design was disrupted after a historic flood in 1949 forced the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to reroute and dam the river. The water was pushed farther away from the eighth green, eliminating the risk of potentially hitting it into the hazard. Over time, trees were planted, and the view of the river was blocked out.  

Hanse shifted the green some 30 yards left, reintroducing a creek along the left side of the hole. It’s one of the few times that Hanse didn’t fully rekindle the original design, though that was out of necessity.  

An aerial view of hole 8 at Colonial. (Matt Hahn/PGA TOUR)

By moving the green left, Hanse brought an existing creek into play that now hugs the left side of the hole and rekindles the hole's risk-reward nature. The hole's presence in the landscape, its clinging to a cliff’s edge and its fall down to the creek are all reminiscent of the old eighth hole, albeit with the water running on the opposite side.   

The 13th hole also was affected by the Trinity's rerouting. The Trinity used to weave in front of the tee box and swaddle the green. Today, a pond guards the front of the green. Hanse lifted the hole, elevating the green by about 10 feet and moving it back to encapsulate how the green played in the 1940s. Hanse also expanded the tee box, which spans 70 yards and will create variety in how the tee shot is played.  

A view of hole 13 on the newly-renovated Colonial. (Matt Hahn/PGA TOUR)

A view of the creek by the 13th hole at Colonial. (Matt Mramer/Matt Hahn/PGA TOUR)

An aerial view of Colonial showing the 13th hole and the creek nearby. (Matt Hahn/PGA TOUR)

The other change that will be widely recognized is the removal of the concrete spillway that runs from the par-3 16th and intersects between the 17th and 18th fairway. Grillo famously found the area right of the 18th fairway, which caught the small current and floated back toward the 18th tee box.  

Before the renovation, the concrete spillway started just in front of the 16th tee box and veered along the left side of the hole before breaking left and lining the right side of the adjoining 17th and 18th holes, which run in opposite directions. All the concrete was removed, and replaced with a natural creek bed that will render Grillo’s situation unrepeatable and spruce up the look of Colonial’s closing stretch.  

“I think, without a doubt, we will be excited that CBS won't be showing any scenes of the golf ball rolling down the concrete spillway,” Hanse said with a chuckle.  

An aerial view of hole 16 at Colonial. (Matt Hahn/PGA TOUR)

An aerial view of hole 16 with a creek to the left at Colonial. (Matt Hahn/PGA TOUR)

The creek will still be involved in the drama of the closing stretch. Hanse moved the 16th green left to bring the creek further into play. Water now tightly guards the left and right sides of the green.  

The trio of holes famously nicknamed the "Horrible Horseshoe" remained largely untouched. Colonial’s third, fourth and fifth holes were given that moniker because of their difficulty and the shape they form as they wrap around the driving range. Hanse removed greenside bunkers on the fourth and fifth holes while slightly tweaking the green contours. The left side of the fifth hole also features a shallow drop-off into a native area. Otherwise, the holes closely resemble their pre-renovation form.  

“You don't want to mess with something that's already established and plays very well,” McIntosh said.  

An aerial view of hole 5 at Colonial. (Matt Hahn/PGA TOUR)

It’s a sentiment Hanse handled carefully throughout the process. He made several distinct changes to the course, re-establishing the rugged aesthetic and opening up ways to make the water hazards more prevalent. The course was also modernized, with the installation of new hydronic systems that can run cold water under every green during Texas’ scorching summers. Colonial’s bentgrass greens are better suited for cooler climes, but also an important part of the club’s history.

Fort Worth businessman Marvin Leonard created Colonial because he did not like putting on the grainy Bermudagrass greens found throughout the South. He wanted a course that utilized the smoother putting surfaces that he encountered while playing in the Northeast. That’s why Colonial became the first course in Texas with bentgrass greens, one reason the club became the first club south of the Mason-Dixon Line to host a U.S. Open. The recent renovation also improved Colonial’s drainage.

The bones of Colonial remain the same, however. The corridors look familiar on almost every hole. There was hardly any tree removal or added distance, the two most prominent features in modern course renovation. Two trees died while replacing the irrigation system, but they’re the only ones missing post-renovation. A few holes were lengthened ever-so-slightly, while some fairway bunkers were moved to combat modern distance gains.

Colonial is still very much a club under construction. Though the heaviest lift – the course – is done, half of the clubhouse is gone, as is the Wall of Champions and the famous Ben Hogan statue. The renovated clubhouse will be completed in time for the 2025 Charles Schwab Challenge.  

A view of hole 18 with the clubhouse behind at Colonial. (Matt Hahn/PGA TOUR)

McIntosh chuckled when asked about it. “Lucky that’s not my problem,” he said. 

For the first time in the last year, he can say that. That’s for a different crew and project manager to handle.  

As McIntosh looked over the course, just three weeks from the start of the Charles Schwab Challenge, he looked forward to that first exhale. Maybe it’ll come around July 4, he wonders aloud, after the tournament is finished and members can finally play. “But we’ll see,” McIntosh said.  

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Volta ao Algarve em Bicicleta

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Sprint | Vila Real Santo António (167.6 km)

Points at finish, kom sprint (3) alcaria (103.4 km), kom sprint (3) faz fato (148 km), youth day classification, team day classification, race information.

• Date: 16 February 2024
• Start time: 12:00 (13:00 CET)
• Avg. speed winner: 39.636 km/h
• Race category: ME - Men Elite
• Distance: 192.2 km
• Points scale: 2.PRO.Stage
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• ProfileScore: 59
• Vert. meters: 2572
• Departure: Vila Real de Santo António
• Arrival: Tavira
• Race ranking: 29
• Startlist quality score: 661
• Won how: Sprint of large group
• Avg. temperature: 18 °C

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Nelly Korda Comes Up Clutch, Captures Sixth Victory of 2024 Season at Liberty National GC

Angela stanford rolls at copper rock.

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JERSEY CITY, N.J. — It’s no wonder that she’s the Rolex Women’s World Golf Rankings No. 1.

After a 2-over opening nine at Liberty National Golf Club, it looked like a sixth 2024 victory might be out of reach for Nelly Korda. But as she’s done so many other times this season, the now 14-time LPGA Tour winner dug deep and battled forward, outlasting Hannah Green by one shot to win her sixth title in her last seven starts at the Mizuho Americas Open.

Korda began the round with a two-shot lead over Green, but the Australian immediately picked up a shot on Korda, making a birdie on the par-4 1st hole to move to 12-under total, now one stroke back of the two-time major champion.

Korda then stumbled, bogeying the par-3 2nd hole to drop from 13-under to 12-under and sit in a tie with Green. Korda regained a one-shot advantage over Green with a birdie on the par-3 4th hole, tripping up with a bogey on the fifth hole to slip back to 12-under and to again be tied with Green.

While Green stayed steady, Korda made another mistake on the 7th hole, bogeying the par 4 to completely erase the two-shot lead she began the day with and dropping to 11-under, now one shot back of Green. But Green only held the solo lead for a short while, as the five-time LPGA Tour winner made bogey on the par-5 8th hole to open up a three-way tie for first at 11-under alongside Korda and Ayaka Furue, who shot 1-under on her front nine at Liberty National but ultimately faded after making three bogeys and a double bogey in her final seven holes.

The race to the finish remained in a deadlock, as Korda and Green matched pars on the ninth hole and birdies on the par-5 10th hole to share the lead at 12-under with eight holes to play and the rest of the field struggling to match their pace. Korda and Green then parred 11 and 12 before each grabbed another birdie on the par-5 13th hole to move to 13-under.

Both players parred the tricky par-3 14th hole and then birdied the par-4 15th hole to get to 14-under total with three holes to play. Korda and Green again matched pars on 16 and 17, and each came to the last needing a birdie to capture another 2024 victory.

On the 18th tee, Green had the honor, pulling her tee shot into the left rough, while Korda easily found the fairway. Playing her approach shot first, Green’s second landed in the rough just short of the left greenside bunker, leaving the Aussie a tricky pitch shot, one that she hit to roughly 15 feet, handing the advantage to Korda.

Korda’s birdie try nearly dropped, and she ultimately tapped in for par, putting the pressure on Green to make her putt to force a playoff. And when Green failed to convert, two-putting for a closing bogey, it was Korda for whom the crowds once again roared on the final green of an LPGA Tour tournament, as the 25-year-old emerged victoriously for the sixth time this season at the Mizuho Americas Open.

“Oh, my gosh, six, I can't even really gather myself right now with that, the head-to-head that Hannah (Green) and I had pretty much all day,” said Korda. “Wasn't my best stuff out there today but fought really hard on the back nine. It was just amazing to share the stage with Hannah. I consider her a pretty good friend out her, and it was a lot of fun going head-to-head against her.”

With the victory, Korda becomes the first player since Inbee Park in 2013 to win six times in a single season and is the first American to do so since Beth Daniel won seven titles in 1990. She becomes just the eighth player since 1980 to win six or more times in a year, joining Betsy King, Annika Sorenstam, Karrie Webb, Lorena Ochoa, Yani Tseng, Daniel and Park. Korda has also tied Sorenstam as the fastest player to win six times in an LPGA Tour season since 1980, doing so in her eighth 2024 start.

Korda earned five consecutive victories earlier this season at the LPGA Drive On Championship, the FIR HILLS SERI PAK Championship, the Ford Championship presented by KCC, the T-Mobile Match Play presented by MGM Rewards and The Chevron Championship. Her winning streak was broken at last week’s Cognizant Founders Cup by Rose Zhang, who won the Mizuho Americas Open in 2023. 

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Giro d'Italia stage 19 Live - A big chance for the breakaway

Volta ao algarve - preview.

Evenepoel takes top billing but McNulty, Thomas, Jakobsen and defending champion Rodrigues may steal some of the spotlight

Remco Evenepoel is, according to those around him at QuickStep-AlphaVinyl , a calmer and more mature bike rider in 2022. Mild misgivings about the inclusion of gravel on the route notwithstanding, he was certainly magnanimous in defeat to Aleksandr Vlasov at the recent Volta a la Comunitat Valenciana, offering fist bumps of congratulations to the men who finished ahead of him at Alto Las Antenas Maigmó Tibi.

Even so, one can safely assume that Evenepoel’s new-found zen has its limits. Defeat in Valencia ended his striking sequence of never having lost a leader’s jersey in a stage race – he has seven multi-day wins on his palmarès – and, if his short career to date is any guide, a forceful response would appear imminent.

Enter the Volta ao Algarve , the next race on Evenepoel’s programme. 

Two years ago, he delivered his final exhibition before the first coronavirus lockdown by landing two stages and overall victory here, and he returns to Portugal this week as the man most likely to carry off the spoils in a race that features two familiar – and gravel-free – summit finishes, as well as a 32km individual time trial.

There are 174 other riders in the Volta ao Algarve peloton, including a former Tour de France winner and a brace of former world champions, but Evenepoel is not simply the pre-race favourite, he is the overwhelming box office attraction. 

It has ever been thus. Few riders have ever done their growing up quite as publicly as Evenepoel, the only rider to make junior races a marquee event in World Championships week. Win or lose, the headlines in Portugal will again be his.

But even if Evenepoel is central to the narrative, there are plenty of other subplots to be followed in the Algarve this week. 

Several of them are shoehorned into the Ineos Grenadiers team, where Geraint Thomas starts his 16th season as a professional in an event where he has shone in the past. He is joined by the future of the British team, as newly-minted cyclo-cross world champion Tom Pidcock begins his road campaign alongside Ethan Hayter , who placed second overall last year, and new arrival Ben Tulett. A deep line-up also sees Dylan van Baarle and Michal Kwiatkowski – overall winner here in 2014 and 2018 – get their years underway in Portugal. For Ineos Grenadiers and everyone else, the early season races are becoming more and more important. 

The Volta ao Algarve also sees Tobias Foss begin his build-up to the Giro d’Italia at the head of a solid Jumbo-Visma squad, while David Gaudu leads the line for Groupama-FDJ and Sergio Higuita is et to make his European debut for Bora-Hansgrohe after winning the Colombian national road race title on Sunday.

On the evidence of early-season form, meanwhile, Brandon McNulty (UAE Team Emirates) might well be the rider most likely to challenge Evenepoel. The American was climbing very well at the Challenge Mallorca, where he was an impressive solo winner of the Trofeo Calvia, while the stage 4 time trial here should also be to his liking.

His fellow countryman Joe Dombrowski is on hand for his Astana-Qazaqstan debut, though the team is without another new arrival, Gianni Moscon, due to illness. 

Warren Barguil (Arkéa-Samsic) moves on to Portugal after a fast start in Mallorca, though the sheer length of the time trial likely places a ceiling on what he can achieve in the overall standings.

As ever, the Volta ao Algarve offers something for everything, and there are two clear opportunities for the sprinters. Fabio Jakobsen (QuickStep-AlphaVinyl) looked imperious in the Volta a la Comunitat Valenciana and he has already won twice on the Volta ao Algarve’s stage 1 finish on the Avenida dos Descobrimentos in Lagos.

Bryan Coquard (Cofidis) and Mads Pedersen (Trek-Segafredo) have also both started 2022 with two wins and a sparkling run of form, and they will inevitably be in the mix this week. Alexander Kristoff opened his account for Intermarché-Wanty-Gobert with a win in Almeria, while Tim Merlier (Alpecin-Fenix), Pascal Ackermann (UAE Team Emirates) and Jake Stewart (Grouapama-FDJ) will all be keen to get off the mark here.

Elsewhere, men with designs on Opening Weekend, such as Nils Politt (Bora-Hansgrohe) and Yves Lampaert (QuickStep-AlphaVinyl), will look to bank warm weather miles in Portugal, while Stefan Küng (Groupama-FDJ) is always a strong performer in the Volta ao Algarve time trial and he will surely enjoy the extra length this time out.

Defending champion João Rodrigues (W52/FC Porto) leads the home challenge, and although the field is deeper than it was during last year’s pandemic-postponed May edition, he will expect to be up there in the uphill finales at Fóia and Malhão, as will his teammate and 2021 Volta a Portugal winner Amaro Antunes.

W52/FC Porto are one of ten Portuguese squads in the peloton and therein lies a sizeable part of the charm of this event. The Portuguese pelotão, composed of teams that are part of bigger sporting clubs, has for decades endured almost independently of trends beyond its borders. 

The Volta a Portugal, by dint of its summer date, has always been an event utterly dominated by domestic riders and teams. The Volta ao Algarve, with its early slot on the calendar, allows the rest of the world to sample a flake of a unique cycling culture.

Every year, the Volta ao Algarve offers mild variations on a familiar theme, and the 2022 edition has a familiar feel, with two flat days, two uphill finishes and a time trial. 

That balanced combination has been drawing WorldTour teams to this corner of the world since the Volta ao Algarve moved to its February date almost twenty years ago, and the organisation have seen no reason to tinker unnecessarily with that formula.

Wednesday's opening stage from Portimao to Lagos winds inland to take in some undulating terrain around the climb to Nave, but the sprinters will contest the win on the Avenida dos Descobrimentos. 

The first rendezvous for the GC men comes on the second day as the race climbs into the hills of the Serra de Monchique. The long ascents of Pomba and Picota serve as a preamble to the Alto da Fóia (7.7km at 6.1%), where Tadej Pogačar announced himself in 2019 and where Evenepoel unleashed a thunderous late acceleration twelve months later.

The category 4 climb of Bengado could provoke late frissons on stage 3 to Faro, but the sprinters’ teams still have more than 20km to ensure another bunch finish. This year, the time trial moves to the penultimate day and the organisers have tacked on an extra dozen kilometres to the usual menu to create a 32km test from Vila Real de Santo António to Tavira. The distance is particularly striking given that this year’s entire Giro d'Italia has just 26km across its three weeks. 

In a five-day stage race, this time trial will carry outsized weight and shortens Evenepoel’s odds of overall victory still further.

The grand finale, meanwhile, comes once again on the Alto do Malhão, which is tackled twice on stage 5. The ascents of Picota, Vermelhos and Alte are also on the route, but the short and sharp haul up the category 2 Malhão (2.6km at 9.5%) is where the race will ignite.

Barry Ryan will be at the Volta ao Algarve for Cyclingnews, providing exclusive news, interviews and analysis from the race.  

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Barry Ryan is Head of Features at Cyclingnews. He has covered professional cycling since 2010, reporting from the Tour de France, Giro d’Italia and events from Argentina to Japan. His writing has appeared in The Independent, Procycling and Cycling Plus. He is the author of The Ascent: Sean Kelly, Stephen Roche and the Rise of Irish Cycling’s Golden Generation , published by Gill Books.

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Tour of Algarve Stage 2 Highlights: Dani Martinez pips Remco Evenepoel to win sprint atop the Alto da Foia

Watch the Stage 2 highlights of the Tour of Algarve where Dani Martinez beat Remco Evenepoel to come away victories atop the Alto da Foia. Stream the cycling season live on discovery+, the Eurosport app and at eurosport.com.