/ TOUR DE FRANCE
ESTABLISHED 1903 EDITIONS 108
After a few years of exuberant experimentation with its route, following the innovative leads of the Giro and Vuelta, the Tour has settled into a more traditional shape for 2021. For all that the organisers ASO sent the peloton into the Alps as early as days two and four last year, it’s the stage 20 Planche des Belles Filles time trial that we’re all going to remember. Perhaps after the year we’ve all had, a normal Tour is just what cycling needs.
And if the route of the 2021 Tour is diametrically opposed to that of last year, the grand départ is in the opposite corner of the country from Nice, where 2020 kicked off. Brittany is renowned for being France’s cycling heartland, and while the double ascent of the climb out of the town of Mûr-deBretagne on stage 2 is not the Alps, at this point in the Tour, it doesn’t need to be.
In recent years, the Tour has been reducing the time trial stages, but
2021 shows a small step in the other direction. Two individual tests, at 27km on stage 5 and 31km on stage 20, are a long way from the 50km-plus TTs of the 1990s and 2000s, but they will still define the race, especially as the final
TT takes place on the penultimate day.
The big-ticket mountain stages are the innovative double ascent of Mont Ventoux on stage 11 and the Pyrenean summit finish on the Col de Portet.
The Ventoux stage will cross the climb twice, and the second time will precede one of the fastest descents in the sport down to Malaucène. The Portet is one of the highest summit finishes the
Tour has ever used, and it precedes a very tough stage the next day, also with a summit finish, at Luz Ardiden.
Perhaps we’re entering a new era with the Tour de France. In recent years the organisers have gone to great pains to try to design in both suspense, and full, every-day action for three weeks, which can sometimes be contradictory aims. Last year, there were significant climbs almost every other day through the first part of the race, then relentless climbing through the second half. Yet the most exciting stages were a rolling stage in week one which was hit by crosswinds, and that final time trial. In designing a Tour which is almost abnormal in how normal it is, perhaps ASO have finally acknowledged the old cycling truism, that it’s the riders who make the race.