The 2025 Tour de France route has been unveiled and while it’s a return to tradition, think of a remake rather than a replica. There are some surprises too.
Lille had been unveiled already but a grand départ in France is remarkable given it’s the first since 2021; 2026 is Barcelona and then probably Britain. Lille’s built on its location as a transport hub to reinvent itself as a post-industrial city. For cyclists the quasi-suburb of Roubaix is more famous of course. Neither are holiday destinations as such but Nord president said his region has frites, it has beer and he’s expecting a big party.
Stage 1 (185km) is announced as a sprint finish, obvious given the flat route. It’ll be hectic given the crash risk, heightened because of the reward of the yellow jersey at the finish. They’re not big on the profile but the climbs are enough to award the mountains jersey. Mont Cassel has its cobbles and Mont Noir is a bidon’s throw from the Belgian border.
Stage 2 is the longest at 209km. A start in Lauwin-Planque which you can be forgiven for hearing about for the first time today even if you’re French, it’s a village on the edge of Douai now dwarfed by its logistics park but the mayor is coincidentally the president of the Nord départment which has bid for the grand départ; the next place over is Hénin-Beaumont which if you’re French you’ve probably heard of. Anyway the finish in Boulogne by the sea is more important, it’s got some sharp climbs which suit punchy riders like Mathieu van der Poel, Wout van Aert… and Tadej Pogačar.
Three days and Dunkerque for a sprint finish Stage 3 (178km). Note what’s absent, a start in Valenciennes yet no pavé. There’s bound to be cobbled roads in towns along the way but surprisingly the Tour deliberately avoids the infamous Roubaix sectors.
Stage 4 (173km) and the roads to Rouen, the capital city of Normandy. There are more climbs late in the stage including an uphill run to the line, another day tilted to the classics riders over the pure sprinters.
Stage 5 and a 33km time trial in Caen. Caen? 9 July. There’s no profile yet but we might not need one, it’s very flat: advantage Remco Evenepoel and the heavyset specialists.
Stage 6 (201km) amid the word bocage, a term applied to the local woodland. This is a trip through la Suisse normande, a “little Switzerland” because of the hills, valleys and even cliffs. It’s on Guillaume Martin’s training roads and anyone visiting for the stage or following the race could do worse than staying in his domaine which has rooms available but they’re not cheap. It’s uphill into the finish on the outskirts of Vire, another day for the puncheurs.
Puncheurs? Them again as Stage 7 (194km) features the Côte de Menéhiez. It’s more famous as the climb at Mûr-de-Bretagne. Just like 2021 when Mathieu van der Poel won here, the race will go up to cross the line then make a small loop before charging back up for the finish. There are other climbs in Brittany.
Stage 8 (174km) and finally a stage for the sprinters in Laval but this could be one of those days where nobody attacks; unfortunately this stages comes on a Saturday when expectant audiences might want more.
Bis repetita as they say in France for Stage 9 (170km) for a likely sprint finish. Only instead of going straight to Châteauroux the route deliberately zigs and zags to try and catch a crosswind. Clever, but hopeful as this part of France in summer is normally calm.
Stage 10 (163km) on the 14 July. It should have TV viewers rubbing their hands, and riders doing a full warm-up although paradoxically it could take so long for the break to go that some riders hoping to jump later may deliberately avoid the rollers to save energy. This looks very promising with 4,400m of vertical gain across and lumpy rural roads, some used by the Dauphiné in recent years. Expect wave after wave of attacks as riders hope to make the day’s breakaway while the GC riders will have to mark their rivals in the uphill finale too which goes beyond the town of Mont-Dore to finish at the ski station above. The race heads south for the rest day in the city of Toulouse where riders will be able to stay in the same hotel for several days.
Stage 11 (154km) and a rare loop, with the stage starting and also finishing in the Toulouse. It’s past the Fronton vineyards on flat to rolling terrain. The spice comes with just 8km to go and the climb of Pech David, the ridge that sits above the city of Toulouse. There are different ways up and no map yet but with talk of 20% slopes and freeze-faming the route presentation it looks unmistakably like the Chemin des Canalets. It’s more like 18% easing to 12% but it’s narrow and starts with a very tight turn. This will see many sprinters ejected and the GC riders can’t afford to start the climb outside of 20th place either.
The Pyrenees begin on Stage 12 (181km). There’s 3850m of vertical gain after the dash across the plains to the Col du Soulor and then crossing over to the backroad Col des Bordères for some added elevation and a narrow descent. Then comes Hautacam, a sustained climb that will take close to 40 minutes even for the best.
We get the return of the mountain time trial on Stage 13 (11km) from Loudenvielle to the Peyragudes altiport, the first since 2004 (excluding Combloux in 2023, the day Jonas Vingegaard broke Tadej Pogačar, uphill to Megève but not really a mountain). There are three kilometres before the climb but they’re flat either and it’ll have teams thinking about bike changes, whether it’s worth doing part of the Peyresourde on a TT bike.
Saved for the third Saturday, Stage 14 (183km) is a classic: the Toumalet, Aspin and Peyresourde. That would be plenty but the race returns to the Col du Treuil and Superbagnères. The Super- suffix is because it sits above Bagnères de Luchon but in cycling it’s seen some super sport. Greg LeMond built his 1986 Tour win here when Bernard Hinault cracked. The last time the Tour visited was in way back in 1989 when Robert Millar won the stage, beating Pedro Delgado in his search for lost time while three minutes later Laurent Fignon gained twelve seconds on Greg LeMond to take the yellow jersey by seven seconds. A scenario to yearn for next summer. The long absence has been logistical, the Pique river had rickety bridges unsuitable for the Tour’s gigantisme and and new bridges have been installed and so the Tour and its trucks can pass. History and engineering aside, this is a big day out with 4,950m of vertical gain.
After six nights in the same hotel, riders will pack up their bags when Stage 15 (169km) leaves Muret for Carcassone via the Montagne Noire mini-mountain range, including the tricky Pas du Sant pass. It should be a battle between the breakaway and the sprinters, with obligatory references to the Vent d’Autan and Tramontane winds. Next is the rest day in Montpellier.
Stage 16 (172km) is dominated by Mont Ventoux, the route is near flat all day until Bédoin and the classic final 20km up the “Giant of Provence”, the mountain that’s both glorious and also the repository of myths and clichés, a recipe sustained by the race’s relatively sparing visits. Mont Ventoux featured in 2021, and the last summit finish was supposed to be in 2016 but famously the race didn’t make it to the top that day as Chris Froome ran part of the way to Chalet Reynard. Anyway the first 150km could allow a breakaway to form and build up a lead.
Stage 17 (161km) sees the race turn north and the Bollène-Valence route could be a Paris-Nice stage in reverse. Instead of a parade up the Rhone valley its into the Baronnies, the pre-Alpine foothills which might encourage a breakaway before a likely sprint at the end on the edge of town.
Stage 18 (171km) and a départ Vif, near Grenoble. It’s the start of a giant day in the mountains with a y-axis of evil totalling 5,500 metres of vertical gain, all in just 171km. The final climb is the Col de la Loze but the novelty is the eastern ascent via Courchevel rather than Méribel like before. It’s not as demented as the western version but still 2,300m high and the final is up a cycle path.
The very next day and more roller coaster racing. The opening climb on Stage 19 (130km) sees the race avoid the often closed-because-of-landslides main road and the route above Ugine is far harder than the profile suggests. The Saisies takes the race over the Beaufortain part of the Alps and then comes the picture-postcard perfect climb of the Col du Pré which leads to the Cormet de Roselend. The finish is less scenic, the climb to La Plagne – where Mark Padun won the Dauphiné stage in 2021 – has no surprises except for the sheer length.
Stage 20 (185km) is the last chance breakaway day. With 2,850m of vertical gain across the Jura mountains and across Comté cheese terroir it’s accessible to many riders and teams all desperate for a season-saving result. It’s via the long but gradual Col de la Croix de Serra, later the small but sharp climb in Thésy which featured in the 2023 Dauphiné: you might remember Richard Carapaz attacked and then cracked under his own pace leaving Jonas Vingegaard to go solo for the win in nearby Salins, here there’s a bit further to go in Pontarlier. Finally it’s back to Paris for Stage 21 (120km) and the Champs-Elysées stage.
The Verdict
It begins in France and it stays in France. It goes anti-clockwise and stays on flat terrain for the opening week. There’s no pavé in the Nord, no ribinous in Brittany and no gravel anywhere either. Those 8-5-2 bonus seconds on climbs have gone. It’s all rather traditional. Only see it as a Christian Prudhomme remake of a Jean-Marie Leblanc Tour: see the multitude of hills exploited on what would be sprint stages, note the shorter stage distances, plus the comparative lack of time trial kilometres too.
The passage across the north of France felt inevitable after years of avoiding it, often deliberately as the organisers went in search of more lively terrain south of a line Bordeaux to Strasbourg. Racing north they’ve done well to exploit the terrain and there are plenty of days for puncheurs at the expense of sprinters: the opening week could be quite lively, especially if you tune in for the final hour. The other day Mathieu van der Poel was talking about mountain biking next summer, his managers and sponsors will want him for this opening week.
Fewer time trial kilometres? 44km in total is actually average since 2013 – after the Bradley Wiggins course – but here time a quarter of the count is from the Peyragudes mountain time trial.
There are five summit finishes and worth naming because Hautacam, Superbagnères, Mont Ventoux, the Col de la Loze and La Plagne are giants, these mountain stages ensure the vertical gain for the three weeks is almost as high as last year despite a course only reaching the Pyrenees on Stage 12. The risk is these big days are seared in the collective consciousness as GC stages, that the big teams ride big tempo and one or two riders dominate; then this gets repeated each time.
How to count the “sprint stages”? That’s harder. Race boss Christian Prudhomme often quips “the dogma is that there is no dogma” for route design but there is a house rule about never having more than two consecutive sprint finishes. There are eight stages (1,3,7,8,9,15,17 and 21) for the pure sprinters but 15 and 17 aren’t nailed on; theoretically a rider like Wout Van Aert or Mathieu Van der Poel in peak condition could at least win these and several more like 2,4,6 and 11. Ideally there would be a couple of extra days of mid-mountain breakaways like Stage 10 but such is geography that you can’t rustle these up.
Maybe this is not Tadej Pogačar’s absolute ideal route as there’s no gravel or cobble stages where he probably has a comparative advantage over rivals; similarly he may prefer a flat time trial in place of Peyragudes. Yet it all suits him and an anti-Pogačar course just doesn’t exist; perhaps a cartoonist today could sketch a smiling Remco Evenepoel in front of a map of of 21 flat time trial stages… but even then would you bet on the Belgian? Yet good luck to all those certain in their predictions for next July given we can’t forecast this weekend’s weather too well nor electoral events in the coming days… let alone sporting outcomes next summer. Last winter Pogačar’s decision to ride the Giro was partly informed by Jonas Vingegaard and Visma’s complete superiority; fate changed all that.
For more see also “Further Tour Notes” too
Thanks for the great review, overview and preview!
Shame about the lack of pavé, but plenty of non-sprint stages early on.
S10 looks exciting. And more medium mountain stages would be a good thing.
Seems like they’ve kept the mountains for the second half to preserve a bit of interest on GC. Although the mountain TT might finish that off… unless Pog and Vin are roughly equal to each other.
S14 looks pretty good too, whereas S18 will probably be dreadful with that relatively low percentage on the final climb.
I’ll make my annual complaint about the lack of a long day with mountains. These can be excellent – the myth about the teams always negating these has been disproven many times – and a GC rider should be able to do everything (plus it might show up a weakness of someone – who knows, maybe Pog or Vin are not very good over a 230km course with mountains: they’ve possibly never had to do it).
A year ago Pogačar’s supposed weakness was long days with long climbs in the heat. That’s been dismissed now, probably he just forgot to eat enough each time before and this year he won the Mottolino stage of the Giro, 220km with 5,400m of climbing; and the Plateau de Beille stage of the Tour with 198km and 4,800m of gain. We’ll see for Stage 18 which is “only” 171km but a giant 5,500m.
Maybe it’s Vin who is not very good over a 230km course with mountains. Or maybe nobody. Or maybe someone else is particularly good. It would be better to have one such stage to find out. Variety is always a good thing.
Is ‘forgot to eat’ really likely? Seems like the most implausible excuse. And it happened ‘each time’?
Agreed with your first point.
Re: bonking, it’s likely for the Galibier stage because everybody had seen that on TV and noticed before it was even used as an excuse. Just one factor, together with having to cover multiple deep attacks by himself before, of course (something which doesn’t happen much, curiously, but it also notably happened during the 1st stage of the Giro).
It’s especially important in modern cycling and UAE weren’t as meticulous as needed, in their DS style.
It famously happened to other athletes like MvdP. Now the feeding technique is getting honed, the products too (not that I think it’s all in that, but it’s factually one of the big changes in recent cycling).
As for “each time”, well, it’s about *that* time. In 2023 he cracked big time because of Combloux the day before, not about the route or temperature or whatever. As when Remco cracked at the 2023 Vuelta, more a combination of mind and context than anything athletical.
They say Pogi didn’t feed great at Le Lioran, either, but he didn’t crack.
Not many more examples, I think. I don’t think anybody spoke of feeding on Hautacam (I might be wrong) or the Ventoux day in 2021. Among other thing, because he was beaten rather than cracking. People are surprised he didn’t have off-days this years, but it’s not like he used to, actually. There’s that couple of famous ones named above, but it’s about being cracked rather than cracking (subtle difference…).
That the guy struggled on long days or long climbs is just urban legend by people who hadn’t seen him racing. At 19 he was already effective on long pro-level climbs. At 20 he was winning on Mt. Baldy and against more qualified competition on three different sort of climbs at the Vuelta, including the long ones in Andorra. And what about Grand Colombiere in 2020?
It’s true that he performed better under cold and wet weather rather than in hot one, but that can be trained, too (much more than the other way around, curiously enough). And I suspect he’ll always prefer northern days.
More than slightly OT, but:
Does the team keep tabs on how many kcal their captain has digested? They can know for certain what they´ve managed to hand over, but what the rider has actually drunk or eaten must be a minor question mark. Sometimes the drink bottle is thrown away with nearly full content and some items inside the musette turn out to be unpalatable.
It would seem completely foolproof to have a plan of taking those 30-40 g of carbs in one form or the other every 15 minutes (and the plan is probably easy to follow on a training ride) but “forgetfulness” – including whatever comes to play during various stages and moments of a race – is a human factor that unavoidably comes into it and I don´t think we should dismiss it as implausible just because we are talking about pro teams and pro riders.
It can have happened more often, but without the same consequences.
PS Of course, the crucial difference could between the individuals and their ability to digest and utilize carbs during the race and especially when going above a certain intensity.
Y-Axis of evil & 3 days and Dunkerque 😁
Thanks for the fast notes.
Hénin-Beamont & Caen… Lots of francophone jokes 🙂
A little bit disappointed by the fact that there are only summit finishes in the mountain stages. More stages like the 14th of July would have been very good… I’m afraid that we only will have attacks in the last climb of the day, and if there is a rider (and a team) stronger than the other it might be very boring (as a lot of JM Leblanc tours)…
Psychologically, a nice scenario where three of the main summit finishes bring powerful encouraging memories for Vingo, as the Ventoux was when he dropped Pogi for the first time, Col de la Loze is where the 2023 Slovenian yellow bid was definitely “gone, dead” (even if they descended what they’ll now climb) and Hautacam was equally the last nail on Pogi’s coffin in 2022. Of course, they can also mean more motivation for a Slovenian revenge. Doesn’t look just pure chance, and a good script touch by the route planners.
Superbàgneres and La Plagne were mythical climbs 30 to 50 years ago (and further back) but for a series of reasons including logistics for the former they haven’t had much of a recent history (for the latter, I’ll beg Padun’s and Boogerd’s pardon, great days for them but not exactly the best in the history of cycling).
Peyragudes is a draw of sort, as it happened to prove itself in 2022 on the road, in this case because both athletes have great memories when an uphill ITT is concerned, although the sample is limited because they’ve been out of fashion for a while.
All in all, in terms of route it’s quite much advantage Vingegaard (right decision by ASO), but as inrng notes if it’s the same Pogi 2024 in 2025 too, well, no course as such can put him in a tight spot. Perfection isn’t easy to copy-paste, anyway…
I think an even bigger question than ‘Do we get Pog24?’ is ‘Do we get Vin24?’
When looking at Pog’s TdF dominance this year, a lot of people seem to be ignoring that Vin was coming back from a very serious injury and therefore almost certainly not at his best. We don’t know what would have happened had he been at his peak. Hopefully, we find out this year.
As Visma admitted, it wouldn’t have been enough, just as Pogi 2022 wasn’t probably going to be enough for Vingo 2023.
And as reported by many inside sources, the extent of the injury had been deliberately overstated by the team.
Neither sidenotes take anything substantial away from your point, which I agree with.
My main question marks when predicting possible future performances are about the team rather than on the athlete, anyway, given that Vingo just proved last TDF that he can throw in a great performance even in suboptimal conditions, whereas the team has been facing big changes which could imply a gradual decline or at least one season or two of complicated transition.
However, we sure have got something to look forward to, despite all the “end of cycling” complaints.
@gabriele so Vinny was lying about the extent of his injuries then?
It was serious but rather than lying it’s more like some given medical definition can imply several “degrees of seriousness” if no detailed specification is provided. Typical for “punctured lung” which covers a broad variety of different situations and consequences. The team took advantage of privacy and sensitive data to provide ambiguous evaluation. I can’t remember the details but I believe that a therapist at INEOS had reportedly learnt from Visma sources that injuries had allowed turbo training sooner than it was made public and that lung damage hadn’t implied any functional loss.
UAE also insisted on having inside info on Vingo having trained properly and being in good shape much beyond what was being made public by his team. At the time it looked like they were lacking respect, but with hindsight they probably knew what they were saying.
As for the “life threatening” narrative, that was very ambiguous too because even if Vingo might have actually felt that he was risking his life when he crashed and then was brought to the hospital, yet he never factually was in any life threatening medical condition.
Of course IMHO the strict definition of the injuries was real, we just never got very precise details (as I said, they cover a broad range of situations, silly example from this very week: a friend just went on riding MTB for days somewhere in Colorado after fracturing several ribs during the tour itself).
It makes sense, by the way, no obligation for anyone to disclose his full medical record.
They were just playing a lot with silence, words and supposed implications. Part of the game, up to the rivals, fans and press to believe it or not.
The 12 days in hospital were not any less than 12, though, and I think we can trust that he wasn´t back riding on the road much before the team posted about it.
That leaves us a hazy period of about three weeks. We don´t know when he was back on a trainer or when he was back in training (rather than recovering). The team gave no information and the cycling media got what they got by speculating or by asking the opinion of doctors who, naturally enough, spoke in general terms.
Visma no doubt had nothing against a possibility of netting some advantage from this “fog of war” but I never had the impression they were active in spreading it.
@Friday
Benoot’s declaration already near the TDF? 😉
Vingegaard is the rider to watch. The 2023 version was so dominant and Jumbo-Visma were too. This even continued into 2024, see the opening weekend won by the Visma, then they took Paris-Nice and Tirreno, it was only April that spoilt everything with the Dwars and Basque crashes. It’ll be interesting to see if the Giro can tempt Vingegaard much for the same reasons Pogačar went earlier this year.
Evenpoel is the obvious next rider and he’ll take plenty from this year and hope to improve on it; he too suffered from crash injuries of course. It’s always rare to find all the riders together and in peak condition at the start of the Tour; even rarer to find them like this after the first week.
Vingegaard had impressed at O Gran Camiño against poor competition, than again both at the Tirreno and Itzulia the sensations were obviously good but not really astonishingly great, and in general quite far from what he had shown in 2023. Just check the ITTs. Monte Petrano, although he won (!), could be even deemed as worrying. Of course, hindsight has a huge effect, but especially in Italy many commenters were noticing the situation. Itzulia showed little besides the ITT but it was more a matter of racing attitude.
Same for the rest of the team in the Classics. Winning small change in the North doesn’t always bode well for the real thing races, often it’s rather the other way around, and can even be about general lack of confidence in a team. The athlete on form this season was Jorgenson, the rest…
A separate question might be if all this crashing was just bad luck.
I think Bruyneel hit the nail on the head with his comments about Pogacar’s cadence … he manages to maintain a slightly higher cadence for longer.
This sort of thing does not change.
A Tour full of big thursdays and fridays, much more than saturdays and sundays.
Way better for cycling fans than casual public (I just read the previous post about tv rights).
Yes, the weekend’s matter for TV audiences so it’s a surprise they’ve gone for two really plain stages for the second weekend, the kind of days when nobody will attack and people aren’t draw in to watch by any hype.
Now they can’t suddenly find a mountain… but it is near the gravel roads used by Paris-Tours so it’s notable they’ve decided to skip something like this when it might have been within reach and tempting.
As surprising as it may sound, the question is more nuanced.
Big stages in the weekend would bring the very top audience figures, but the other approach (especially while the sport is still reasonably popular) gets a great average. Hardcore fans and moderately interested ones make the extra effort to tune in during weekdays if some high mountain is on offer, while at the same time on weekend afternoons both fans and totally casual public are more prone to tune in all the same (not necessarily *watching*, but audience measurement isn’t about that…).
The Giro long tested this strategy and in Italy it usually worked to defend average audience in a period of decline, avoiding deep negative peaks in viewing figures.
In Italy organisers also tend to use these “easy” weekend stages to make them happen in big cities or cycling hotbeds, in order to have much more people on the roadside, because within the apparent new selling strategy, you’re selling to a niche global public… the *image* of a mass sport (which is such only locally and now more and more under some limited conditions).
I don’t know much about those st 8 and 9 anyway.
Anything can happen of course, but this parcours seems less likely to bring early gc drama than 2024, with lots of chances for the (relatively) big boys to fight it out in the first half of the race. If JV is in good form we should have some drama in the final week, which would be a welcome change. Another change that I will welcome is the return to the Champs Elysees. This year’s Tour went out with a serious whimper, hopefully the next one will have more late fireworks. Seems like it might.
Agreed.
The first half could be a serious trap for Pogi if he and Vingo are back to, say, 2022, or anyway a 2022++ version.
He could be tempted by a cockfight for fun and pride with MvdP and the rest, which won’t reap many minutes if at all, but which might cost a huge deal of energies. Besides, if the Spring goes fine he might be starting with the same deceitful sensation of invincibility he began 2022 TDF on.
A pity the organisers decided that Remco is not a relevant part of the final equation, even if it’s probably the right decision in order to focus on the main duel. The first part of the course is more suited but far grom allowing a serious advantage to be built.
What would be even worse if he just assumes it and skips the Giro all the same (but let’s see what the Italian route is like).
One of the few flaws of the course is the relative lack of middle mountain stages. At least we get abundance of bumpy finales, but middle mountain is a different thing, Mount Dore being a fine example. The only one. It’s like a boxe match between Pogi and Vingo in six uphill rounds.
Not much more space for creativity, as – although it’s not at all about monoclimbing, on the contrary! – yet you’re really asking a huge lot to athletes if you expect them to attack before the last ascent. Barring Superbagneres, 30 to 40 kms always separate the penultimate climb from the beginning of the last one, often a long one on top of that.
These hostile conditions might actually leverage towards more creativity, even, like further out lone attacks from Pogi, more strategy for Visma (WVA back at his best could be the winning weapon precisely thanks to those long valley sections… same for a Matteo/Vingo combi).
And a mix of both options for a crazy Remco, just in case.
Yet, all in all, the racing favoured by the course as such is a more traditional one. With little variations. But probabilities obviously love to be reverted by human beings.
Remco’s got some good chances to go for yellow in the first half, even being careless about his energies just not thinking too much about the final GC.
In that sense, unless he and his team know he’s gone one serious step higher in his whole performance level (given his age, it can be totally legit), I’d go from scratch for the Giro and… half a Tour. Even going all in on this TDF isn’t promising with so few ITT kms and all those cumulated climbing stages in the second half. But they know better, no doubt, and just Vingo or Pogi having any issue might grant Remco a better result irrespective of the course.
I was quite pleased by the relative lack of long, flat valleys between a lot of the climbs, albeit S18 and 19 are not so promising in that regard – but could be a lot worse. S14 is all up and down, once the climbing starts.
If I was Eve, I would go to the Giro. Better to win that than podium the TdF again – Rog seems to have come to the same conclusion (so if Eve does do the Giro, it’d possibly be a much more interesting race).
S12 has Hautacam pretty isolated, actually, although the double peak before might give a different sensation. And S13 is a single climb pretty much by definition.
S14 is actually the only mountain stage with that proper jigsaw effect.
However, yep, it could be muuuuch worse.
As you said before re: long stages, why not mixing up different conditions of racing a little more?
But, ok, I guess that the idea is the 6 rounds boxe match as I said above. Slightly different between them but not too much. The risk in homogeneity is that it becomes a one way thing.
Not too much to complain about, anyway, being the TDF…
Having seen a couple of usually spot-on detailed route previews/forecasts on Cicloweb, Rouen could be interesting GC wise (small gaps) as the climbing starts before the last 20 kms shown by ASO. Remco day?
Curious situation re:Toulouse, presented as flat but many insiders suggest it should have a good deal of climbing between -45 and -9 kms to the line, like seven côtes in 35 kms or so which could be pretty impacting if confirmed. Categorising it as flat might mean ASO changed their mind and eventually reduced the climbs or they stole another trick from RCS bag (slightly deceitful – while not false or wrong – info, in order to make the race less predictable).
If the tough version is confirmed, the 2nd one is a hell of a week, like not a single easy day barring the rest one on Tuesday (Carcassone the soft one, yet not exactly easy).
OTOH from the same source the last Saturday stage looks like one of the most boring in ages, like the Armstrong years or so (and not all them). Well, of course if the two boxeurs arrive ties to have them playing it out on a flattish terrain could be hugely entertaining. But, again, as above we’re talking low probs.
The finish in Toulouse has some hills and climbs but they’re short and should not be too bad, but we can’t see much of the route for now so we’ll see. The last of these is highlighted and should be the hardest.
The final Saturday’s stage should be a good breakaway day, I hope it won’t be boring, hilly terrain most of the time; think of the day Mohorič won in 2023, similar roads and scenario. Ideally there could be an extra stage or two like this in the race instead of a giant summit finish or a sprint stage.
I was a bit confused initially at Lundi 14 Juillet being a stage day, rather than the traditional rest day, but it seems Tuesday the 15th is the rest day instead. Had to read Inrng’s summary and the under-stated reference to the TV audience to remember that was Bastille day. So… the rest day bumps to Tuesday.
No gimmicks in this Tour. Could end up quite a good race with some surprises – at least below the first two – given how the mountains are back-loaded. The race is going to get tougher and tougher in the 2nd half. There’s sure to be a couple of major blow ups and re-arrangements of the top-10 below TP and JV as we get through the 2nd half.
Finally, very classic (but a bit Vueltesque in overall appearance) also in looots of biiiig transfers with no associated rest day. Climate commitment isn’t fashionable anymore?
However, one more reason to leave the fight for yellow to the puncheurs (or Remco) until the Pyrenees.
Hope there are no shots fired on Pech David!
https://actu.fr/occitanie/toulouse_31555/toulouse-cycliste-blesse-par-tir-temoigne-balle-restera-dans-epaule-vie_16443903.html
Wow. The victim is Clément Delcros who holds the Strava KOM for now, until the evening of the 16 July 2025.
Absolutely shocking news. Lucky for him he was only 500m from the nearest hospital and it was not a lot worse. Hope they catch the driver.
I went to the Pyrenees last year and it was great and now have to go back.
Now thinking of Ventoux or Alps so any tips please?
Ventoux could be great, but based on the idea of nice weather because on a good day you can hang around and enjoy the views from high up. The next day you have the Bollène-Valence stage and so options of seeing the start and being able to walk around the team buses or going out to the countryside for a picnic to watch the race go by when it passes not too far from the Ventoux countryside, somewhere like Le Poët-Célard.
The Alps? You could see a start this time at Vif for Stage 17, it outside Grenoble and better for it, the city has some great parts but also some bad areas so do some homework (email) on where to stay or just better stay in the charming countryside nearby.
Stage 18 has the scenic Col du Pré, a great spot for the Albertville-La Plagne stage but access could be tricky, it depends on the route the race uses and in turn which roads are open. La Plagne itself has less charm but some side roads so access can be good and the valley floor around here and Moutiers has good access for the Loze/Courchevel stage too.
Those are viewing tips, depends if you want to visit for cycling as well, both the Ventoux area and the Alps have a lot of options.
Also for others, the Pyrenees offer plenty if anyone wantsto visit, the mountain TT should be great for spectators and somewhere like Loudenvielle has plenty going on as the TT is there but Superbagnères is just over the Peyresourde.
Given how crash-prone Roglic can be, is this “non-gravel” Tour designed to give this decorated veteran a “final chance” of sorts?
I wouldn’t say it’s designed for him. Roglič got through the gravel stage fine, instead it was Lutsenko’s crash on an ordinary stage that caused a wave which in turn took him out.
The opening week could be hectic but hopefully Roglič makes it through. Sometimes gravel is an audience boost as people tune in for hours of action but without maybe the audience boost can come later if he and others can make it unscathed for the Pyrenees and Alps.
It would be good to see Roglic make it to Paris – Red Bull are probably thinking the same thing!
A pity they did not include Col de Portet. Looked great the last time it was on the course although it was on a very short stage. I would like to see at the end of a long hard Pyreneean stage. But overall a good course on paper again. Probably miles better than the Giro will be providing they will be able to present it.