The course for the 2014 edition of the Tour de Romandie has been unveiled, with the race set to follow its traditional, versatile script. The event will open with a prologue and end with a time trial and will offer stages for the sprinters in addition to a hard queen stage in the Swiss mountains.

The 68th edition of the Tour de Romandie will be a very traditional one, with the race following a format that has been thoroughly tested. Held in late April and early May, the Swiss WorldTour race was once a very important preparation race for the Giro d'Italia but in recent years it has mostly attracted Tour de France riders who have used the race as one final outing before their small midseason break.

The race will kick off on April 29 with a 5km prologue in Ascona. Unlike the 2013 opener which was a rare uphill prologue, the stage has now major difficulties and should be one for the true prologue specialists.

The 203km first stage takes the riders from Ascona to Sion and contains both a 1st and a 2nd category climb. The top of the latter comes 17,4km from the finish and we could see a bunch sprint from a select group at the end of the first road stage.

The 166,5km second stage from Sion to Montreux  should be one for the sprinters as it only contains two category 3 climbs.

It will be followed by the 180,2km queen stage in the Swiss mountains, bringing the riders from Le Bouveret to Aigle, home of the UCI headquarters. The stage contains 3512m of climbing and will be a real mountain stage with four category 1 climbs along the way. The final one, the Col des Villars, comes just 15,5km from the finish.

The fourth stage is a 174km circuit race in Fribourg that consists of 6 laps on a hilly 29km route. The circuit has one smaller climb 17km from the finish and so the stage could be another one for the sprinters.

The race ends with the traditional time trial which will be held on an 18,5km course in Neuchatel. The route has a small 3km between the 9 and 12km marks and so is not comparable to the pancake flat course for the 2013 race against the clock. However, it suits the specialists much more than the uphill time trial to Crans-Montana that ended the 2012 edition of the race.

The 2013 race was won by Chris Froome who won the opening prologue and wore the yellow jersey from start to finish. In recent years, the race has indicated who will win the Tour de France as Cadel Evans, Bradley Wiggins and Froome all won the race in the year when they went on to win La Grande Boucle in the summer.