New season and new calendar placement for the Tour of Hainan. At its third post-Covid edition, after being held in October (2023) and August (2024), the stage race on the southernmost island of China changes its date again and, further anticipating the timing compared to the previous two years, this year it will take place in April, from Monday 7th to Friday 11th.

The race days, although varying the event's agenda placement, remain the same (a choice that confirms the organizers' intention to continue focusing on the format, short but exciting, experimented in the post-pandemic period) and the philosophy behind the overall route design also remains unchanged, once again favoring sprinters.

From the very first stage, the now usual Qionghai-Qionghai with its completely flat 90 kilometers serving as an appetizer allowing participants to warm up their legs for subsequent efforts, there will not be a single day where fast wheels won't be called into action. The second stage Qionghai-Lingshui, except for the short climb (1.7km at 6.2% average) valid as a 2nd category GPM 42 km from the finish, is widely conducive to another bunch sprint, and the same applies to the final stage that from Changjiang, spanning 182.8 totally flat kilometers, will bring the group to conclude hostilities in Sanya.

In between, the third and fourth stages appear more varied but, given how the altimetric difficulties are distributed within them, in these cases too the most likely outcome, at least on paper, is a sprint. In the Lingshui-Baoting (at 212.6 km the second longest stage in the race's history since its return to the calendar), the peak of the last of the 4 Mountain Grand Prizes, the 1st category Atuoling climb (6.7 km at 6%), is 50 kilometers from the finish line, a distance that, should there be a battle uphill and some riders lose contact, many could use to calmly rejoin the group. The Baoting-Dongfang stage of 190.8 km could follow a similar pattern, which, after three consecutive GPMs in the first 47 kilometers (including the 1st category Tropical Rainforest National Park Scenic Highway), features 142 kilometers of descent and flat terrain interrupted only by the Yulong Mountain climb (4.9km at 5.5%) with 52 km to go: too little to prevent the likely final sprint.

A new high-speed show among sprinters and their team trains is about to animate the 2025 Tour of Hainan, a ProSeries race where, given the absence of mountain finishes and the total elevation gain of 7,185 meters (the lowest since the race took its current form), it is likely that the sprinters themselves will compete for the overall victory, a ranking where, at the end of the total 853 kilometers scheduled, the bonus seconds at the finish and at the various intermediate sprints could prove decisive.

THE STAGES

Qionghai - Qionghai (90.3 km)

Qionghai - Lingshui (178.1 km)

Lingshui - Baoting (212.6 km)

Baoting - Dongfang (190.8 km)

Changjiang - Sanya (182.8 km)