Méribel > La Roche-sur-foron
175km Thursday, 17 September Start 11:30 Finish 16:28
The last mountain stage of the race doesn’t come with a summit finish, but serves up an intriguing finale that could reward an aggressive approach by GC riders.
■ Terrain
There are more than 4,000 metres of vertical gain on the menu, the first portion accumulated on the Cormet de Roselend, the climb rising for 19km at six per cent to reach almost 2,000 metres, the route then dropping a similar distance at a similar rate to Beaufort.
The riders will be quickly onto the Col des Saisies, a little shorter and a touch tamer than the Roselend, but still providing another good dose of climbing. From the pass, the road drops through some steep sections to arrive quickly in Flumet, where the route heads straight onto the Col des Aravis, a beautiful climb that winds through a gorge on its lower slopes and steepens towards the top.
A 20km descent follows through La Clusaz and Entremont to reach this stage’s toughest test, the Montée du Plâteau des Glières, which first featured at the Tour towards the mid-point of the 2018 stage to Le Grand Bornand. That day, this spectacular ascent didn’t have a huge impact on the race, but today it should. It rises for 6km at an average of 11 per cent to reach the plateau and the col, dropping steeply to reach Thorens Glières and the far gentler hop over the Col des Fleuries into the finish at La Roche-sur-foron.
■ Gameplan
This stage is finely balanced between the GC contenders and the riders who manage to infiltrate the breakaway, which should feature all of the teams who don’t have a very competitive sprinter still in their ranks. For these outfits, this is likely to be the last chance for glory before the race finishes.
The escapees’ hopes of success depend on when the GC teams decide to start putting each other to the test. If they wait until the very rude ramps of the Glières, the breakaway may well have built up enough
of a cushion to survive to the finish. But if any one team decides to set a hard tempo in the yellow jersey group before that, the breakaways will do very well to stay clear.
The Glières is the critical point for the riders in the top 10 overall. The most resistant, or least fatigued, could use these slopes to gain some useful time. Performances here could also give some indication of the outcome in the La Planche des Belles Filles TT two days hence.
■ Players
One of the few disappointing aspects of last year’s mostly thrilling Tour was not knowing whether Egan Bernal would have been able to sustain his daring solo attack over the Iseran to the finish in Tignes. When that stage was shortened as a result of a freak mountain storm that washed out some roads and blocked others, the Colombian had gained enough time on Julian Alaphilippe to take the yellow jersey, but would Bernal have been in yellow if the
stage had been completed? One of the stages in this final week may provide an answer to that question, and perhaps this one. Using the climb up to the Plâteau de Glières as a launch-pad, the young Colombian would have another 30km of rolling terrain to push out his advantage.
■ Tour Fact
Julian Alaphilippe led the Tour over the Col des Glières in the 2018 Tour on his way to the stage win in Le Grand Bornand.