The Canadian Cycling Magazine Guide to the Tour de France

The important stages to check out, the riders to watch and anniversaries to mark

The race honours its history – Merckx’s first win and the iconic yellow jersey – and stays current with a bit of gravel, which, for the 116-year-old event, is actually kind of retro

The route of the 106th Tour features five mountain summit finishes, 54 km of flat individual and team time trials and, keeping up with the current trend, some gravel. Not that the Tour is any stranger to gravel roads: just search for sepia photographs from the race’s early years to see riders making their way across bumpy surfaces.

Running counterclockwise around the country, this year’s edition utterly ignores the western side of the nation. The Pyrenees Mountains arrive before the Alps. Time bonuses of 10, six and four seconds will again be awarded on every road stage.

On July 6, the first stage in Brussels features a 192-km flat stage with a flew lumps in Flanders, including the Muur van Geraardsbergen, which is associated with the Tour of Flanders and Omloop Het Nieuwsblad. The next day, there’s a team time trial set with 27 km on tap. After heading into France on July 8 for the first of two sprint stages, the field then faces the Vosges Mountains. There are two categorized climbs – Côte du Haut-Koenigsbourg and Côte des Trois Épis – in Stage 5. A very tricky La Planche des Belle Filles summit finish during Stage 6 contains a stretch of gravel and ramps as steep as 20 per cent. A mixture of lumpy Massif Central days and flat days leads to the first rest day on Tuesday, July 16.

High mountains loom i n Week 2, with a Pyrenees summit finish on the iconic Tourmalet, the week’s centrepiece. Before that, the riders face a rolling 27-km individual time trial in Pau. Brief at 117 km, Stage 14 culminates with the famed, 19.4-km, 7.4 per cent climb of the Tourmalet. Stage 15 ends with a climb up Prat d’albis.

After two sprinters’ days into Nîmes and Gap, Stage 18 features three climbs higher than 2,000 m including the Col d’izoard and the Col du Galibier, the latter peaking 18 km before the finish in Valloire. Stage 19 to Tignes is a short, 123-km day with two main climbs: the 2,770-m Col d’iseran, an ascent of 12.9 km at 7.5 per cent on the highest paved mountain pass in France, and the stage finish, a 7.4-km climb of 7 per cent. The final GC day runs 131 km with three major climbs including the 33.4-km summit finish slog on Val Thorens.

July 28 is the date of the procession i nto Paris for the final sprinters’ showdown on the Champs-élysées.