What kind of bike race is this?

A Germany tour?

A tour of Germany?

It's a prologue plus four stages.

This isn't the world.

That's fewer stages and fewer kilometers than, for example, the Paris-Nice race, a French spring classic.

But it is - in the fourth year - at least a multi-day trip in Germany.

A little plant that grows again after the clear cut in the heyday of doping.

At its peak, the Tour of Germany had seven stages, and there were also demanding tours in the federal states: Tour of Bavaria, Thuringia and Hesse in the lead.

So now everything is ready to start again, which should lead back to where German cycling has been before: not to the top, but to a top compartment of the international cycling calendar.

The fourth edition after the restart of the tour in 2018 gives reason for hope.

The field is well-known, the course is demanding in parts, with the highlight of a mountain stage up to Freiburg's local mountain, the Schauinsland, this Saturday.

A climb of around twelve kilometers with an average gradient of more than six percent.

A handful of internationally renowned climbers

The final stage leads to Stuttgart on Sunday.

All this is only a hint of Tour de France, but with the two German professionals Emanuel Buchmann and Simon Geschke and a handful of internationally renowned climbers, it promises considerable sport, especially on the Schauinsland.

In addition to a German national selection, 14 of 18 World Tour teams have registered for the tour.

Some with big names, including Colombian Egan Bernal, who won the 2019 Tour de France and is looking to rejoin the top after a terrible crash, British tour rider Adam Yates, Italian time trialist Filippo Ganna, who won the prologue and climbed the overall leader in the first two stages.

There are also three top sprinters: Fabio Jakobsen from the Netherlands, Caleb Ewan from Australia, who won the first stage, and Alexander Kristoff from Norway, who won the 201-kilometer section from Meiningen to Marburg in the final sprint on Friday.

Big names, then, who hide the fact that the tour of Germany, which takes place during the three-week tour of Spain,

Collection point for race kilometers and form building

The music in cycling is currently playing in Spain, where the young Belgian Remco Evenepoel is causing a stir, not in Germany.

Great merits are not to be earned here, some professionals use the Deutschlandtour as a collection point for racing kilometers, others to build up their form.

Emanuel Buchmann from the German team Bora-hansgrohe is the prime example.

The fourth in the 2019 Tour de France should actually be at the front of the Tour of Spain.

A urinary tract infection prevented his start, the Germany tour is now nothing more than a consolation for him.

Dutchman Mathieu van der Poel from the Alpecin-Deceuninck team made a conscious decision not to start in the Tour de France after retiring from the Tour de France and preferred to ride in the Belgian one-day race Druivenkoers Overijse.

Reason: He is looking for racing toughness, and the stages of the Tour of Germany are a bit too easy for that.

A total distance of 710 kilometers and 11,000 meters in altitude are a manageable challenge for the world's best racing drivers.

The fourth edition of the Germany tour still gives reason for hope.

The direction and the pace are right.

The tour is set to grow from year to year.

Not come hell or high water, but one pedal revolution after the other.

In 2016, the Federation of German Cyclists and the organizing Amaury Sport Organization, which also organizes the Tour de France, agreed that the Tour of Germany should extend over a week by 2028 at the latest.

This would turn the Germany tour into a Germany tour again.