Albi Toulouse

In a final respite before the Pyrenees, the Tour hits the deep south of France for a likely sprint in Toulouse

Logistical (and probably financial) realities have forced the Tour organisers again into creating a convoluted route between two neighbouring cities. Albi and Toulouse are less than 50 miles apart via the A68 autoroute – well under an hour’s drive - though Thierry Gouvenou, the Tour’s technical director, has stretched that journey out to a compressed ‘S’ shape for stage 11, looping to the northwest of Albi to take in the picturesque environs of the Grésigne forest, then heading south and finally east to the ‘pink city’, so named for the pale terracotta bricks that are characteristic of its architecture.

Toulouse apart, this is a sparsely populated region of France, a fact that La Ville Rose has taken advantage of throughout history to make itself if not the centre of France, then the centre of at least its own world. It is linked to the Mediterranean Sea by the Canal du Midi, an engineering masterpiece of the 17th century, and to the Atlantic Ocean by the conjoined Canal Latéral de la Garonne. This position at the heart of a major trading route between North America and the rest of Europe made Toulouse a prosperous city. Later, when the canal trade was superseded by the railways, Toulouse got the hop on

everyone else again by specialising in aerospace technology.

Its position in the 2019 Tour de France is to provide a similar link between the phoney wars of the first 10 days and the high mountains of the second half of the race. There are some minor undulations on the parcours, but the outcome is unlikely to be anything except a bunch sprint finish, as it was the last time the race came to the city in 2008. That day, Mark Cavendish had just started on his own journey towards Tour stardom, taking the second of four stages he would win that year on stage 8. He’s now up to 30, and counting, in total with Eddy Merckx’s record of 34 firmly in mind. No matter how convoluted the Manxman’s journey through the 2019 season has been, this stage will surely be a big target for him.