Reims Nancy

The Tour heads east over the plains of France’s Grand Est region, but there’s a small twist in the tale towards the end

The motto of the city of Nancy, seat of the Dukes of Lorraine over 800 years between 959 and 1766, is an uncompromising warning to outsiders: non inultus premor. ‘I’m not touched with impunity.’ The message – you may attack, but there will be consequences.

Thierry Gouvenou, the technical director of the Tour de France, who oversees the design of the parcours and hunts out traps, twists and pitfalls to spice up the race, may have had this in mind when he incorporated the fourth category climb of the Côte de Maron just before the city limits of Nancy, in stage 4.

Apart from that late hill, it’s a straightforward stage. The peloton will pop out of Reims like a champagne cork and head southeast towards Nancy. It’s almost entirely flat for the first 121km of the day, before the riders reach the first of the two category-4 climbs, the Côte de Rosières. EF-Education First manager Jonathan Vaughters may enjoy the mid-stage passage through the small town of Bar-le-Duc halfway through the stage too, though probably not as much as when his Crédit Agricole team won the Tour’s team time trial there in 2001.

Then comes the Côte de Maron, which has previous form in the Tour.

The last time the race came here, in 2014 on stage 7, the climb helped split the peloton up on what should have been a routine day for the sprinters. In the end, 27 riders contested the stage win atop the 3.7km slope which maxes out at just over 12 per cent gradients. You could envisage the top three – Matteo Trentin, Peter Sagan and Tony Gallopin – filling the podium of a hilly classic rather than a weekone flat stage of the Tour.

However, that day five years ago also featured one more climb before the finish in Nancy – this time around any sprinters who do get distanced on the Côte de Maron have exactly 15 kilometres before the line to make amends for it. The baroudeurs and puncheurs of the Tour may attack on the road to Nancy, but they may end up getting punished for it.