Kitzbüheler Horn

The Austrian climb that dishes out pain

- Laurence Kilpatrick

A horn can be a musical instrument that emits a clarion call of joy or a warning to all around. Or a horn can be a weapon used by bulls and goats to gore their enemies. Or, if you’re a cyclist, a horn can be a climb so steep, so unrelenting, that it feels like a stab to the legs and a klaxon to the self-esteem.

The Kitzbüheler Horn in the Austrian Tyrol is just such a climb. It may not look too threatening from the chocolate box town of Kitzbühel that lies at its foot, but the bucolic scenery hides a collection of unrelenting switchbacks that wind upwards for nearly 10km at an average gradient of over 12%, with spikes at over 20%, to just shy of 2,000m.

It’s a profile to strike fear into the hearts of amateurs and pros alike, and the Horn’s dead-end setup makes it perfect for a gruelling stage finale. The Tour of Austria has visited numerous times, with climbing grandee and Tour de France champion Cadel Evans winning the mountain stage here in both 2001 and 2004, while Alexander Vlasov, currently with Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe, was quickest to the top in 2019. The finish line in these races is the Alpenhaus restaurant after 7km. Beyond this point the road narrows so significantly that taking a pro race up there would be foolhardy. But for the lone amateur rider, once past the Alpenhaus there’s another 2.4km of torture to go.

Horn through the ages

Having completed the climb and made your way back to the Alpenhaus, you’ll be able to soak up some of the history comprehensively detailed on the record board. It lists Anna Plattner as having set the women’s QoM time of 35min 27sec in 2022, while the first man to set a KoM was Swiss rider Beat Breu in 1983, who flew up the climb at 14kmh in 29min 1sec.

A new course record was set in 2007 by Austrian pro Thomas Rohregger, who beat Beat’s time by half a minute to stop the clock at 28min 24sec.