Tourdefrance
Welcome to Tour 2017
ll roads lead to the Tour de France. For many of the world’s greatest riders, this has been their living reality for the last eight months — and now the Tour de France has arrived.
Cycling’s biggest stars are readying themselves to compete on cycling’s biggest stage, one that has been designed with maximum suspense in mind and which, as ever, doffs a cap to history and tradition along the way.
Chris Froome, Nairo Quintana, Alberto Contador and Richie Porte currently enjoy the shortest bookmaker odds, but in the lessthan-exact science that is bicycle road racing, pretenders and wild cards such as Romain Bardet, Alejandro Valverde and Jakob Fuglsang will be waiting in the wings to spring a surprise. After all, in the Tour de France one neglected breakaway, or windy day, or poor feeding strategy can turn into a disastrous and irretrievable time loss. Nobody should be written off in this race.
In terms of the route of this, the Tour’s 104th edition, the first thing you’ll notice is that it doesn’t start in France. Düsseldorf, Germany, is the chosen Grand Départ, marking 30 years since the Tour’s last visit to German territory in 1987, when Stephen Roche started as he
meant to go on by winning the prologue in West Berlin.
This year, following the 14km Düsseldorf time trial, the race makes multiple border raids on its way south through Belgium and Luxembourg, before scaling the twin French mountain ranges of the Vosges and Jura where, as early as stage five, the GC favourites will be tested on the first summit finish.
The race continues south and, after stage nine to Chambéry on the edge of the Alps, everybody piles into planes, trains and automobiles for the east-west transfer to Périgueux in the Dordogne.
Pyrenees
Two flat stages later the race hits the Pyrenees, where a double summit finish on the Col de Peyresourde/peyragudes is followed by the race’s shortest road stage — 101km from St-girons to Foix over three first-category cols, with a 25km downhill run to the finish.
It’s a brace of stages that is sure to animate the GC, but the race settles slightly with two flatter stages sandwiching a rest day and a medium mountains sortie in the Massif Central as the race enters its crucial final week.
From there on in there’s barely a chance to draw breath as the route plunges into the Alps with a pair of huge stages featuring legendary climbs such as the Galibier and Izoard.
For the pure climbers, this represents the last chance to gain time as, following one last rolling stage, the race tackles the final of its few time trial kilometres around the city of Marseille, before the annual final-day procession into Paris for what is the unofficial sprinters’ World Championships on the Champs-elysées.
What the route lacks in summit finishes (there are only four this year) it makes up for with a liberal dosing of steep gradients, which organisers are hoping will make the race harder to control and help maintain the suspense till the end.
The other defining characteristic this year are the nine sprint stages, a figure well up on recent years.
The fastmen will be licking their lips in anticipation at so many opportunities to shine and what’s more, such an abundance of points on offer for the pure sprinters could end up making Peter Sagan’s bid to win a sixth consecutive green jersey that bit more challenging.
“Organisers hope the steep gradients will make the race harder to control”