2018 UCI World Road Race Courses – Innsbruck (Men’s and Women’s)

Unsurprisingly, with the 2018 World Champs being in the heart of the Austrian Alps, the routes for the road races include a whole heap of climbing. 4700m of climbing over 260km for the men and 2500m over 155km for the women.

Womens’ Course

A few short climbs start straight from km zero that will certainly help a breakaway get established before a mellowing in the parcours from around 20km to 60km.  But that will all change over the next 3km as the route heads up the north side of the valley from the village of Terfens. Only 3km long but with a max gradient of 15% and a middle 1.3km averaging almost 12% I’d expect many riders to be dropped for the day at this point (full info on this initial climb).  Then it is on to three laps of the Innsbruck circuit which include an 8km climb averaging a fairly steady 5.5%. This circuit is available for everyone to ride over on Zwift as well (full info on the lap here).  13km to the finish line from the summit of the climb which includes a fairly safe 6km descent and 7km of flat(ish) roads to the line.

Mens’ Course


The mens’ course follows the exact same route as the women but complete 7 laps of the Innsbruck circuit… then things get messy!  Rather than just heading to the finish, the course heads up the North side of the valley up a very testing 2km climb with max gradients of 25%+. All that is then left is a twisting descent and 3km of flat to the finish.