Tour de France Guide

The Tour de France guide with all the stage profiles one one page, plus the race rules, points scales, time cuts and more is now online at inrng.com/tour.

If you want to you want to reference it between now and the end of the race use the menu at the top of the page or bookmark it.

For the rules and prizes there are some small changes:

  • to celebrate the 50 years of the polka dot jersey the first rider to get 50 points in the mountains competition gets a €5,000 prize, symbolic but it’ll be a talking point for a moment
  • if you can remember recent editions had “B” sprints on some stages offering 8-5-3 bonus seconds, these are gone
  • to the relief of sprinters the mountain time trial on Stage 13 has a 33% time cut when it could have been 25%

67 thoughts on “Tour de France Guide”

    • The venue for the Grand Depart is one of the few places that pay a substantial amount of money to the race organisers. This is especially true when it is abroad. Hence why so many starts are abroad.

      Aside: most French stage starts/finishes, contrary to myth, pay very little to host the Tour these days. This has been true for quite some time.

    • Yes, there are normally 5,6 or maybe 7 HC climbs in a Tour, this time there are nine of which five are summit finishes. The total vertical gain for the three weeks is right on the average for the last few years, helped by the first half of the race on flatter terrain.

      • The parcours is really backloaded – almost Giro-esque?

        The final stage looks much more interesting than normal too.

        Thanks as ever for the excellent preview Inrng.

        • The Giro was very possibly more interesting *because* it had so few summit finishes. This can mean that the race is not just about who has the best legs – although I think it was clear that Yates had the best legs on the day that mattered, despite what Carapaz and Del Toro might claim (Carapaz tried many times to catch Yates and couldn’t – and Del Toro could only just keep up with Carapaz).

          The TdF parcours is also less likely to result in tactical nuance because the stages are so short (S20 of the Giro again showed that long (well, it was long-ish) mountainous stages can be interesting).

          • The made for TV, 120 km mountain stage is my bête noir. Longer mountain stages would apparently being boring as everyone would wait for the last climb, but we get 200 km flat stages with a bunch sprint.
            With all the talk of better nutrition, aero bikes etc etc (not to mention the “magic altitude training”) should n’t the parcours be tougher?

          • And Carapaz could do neither. Tactically, Carapaz messed up (so did Del Toro, but everyone’s saying that) – he should have gone after Yates. Then, if Del Toro cannot follow, Carapaz wins.
            But I also don’t think Carapaz had the legs. He never pulled Yates back with his attacks.

          • You still miss the point – possi bly deliberately. Distancing Del Toro and catching Yates are two completely different things.

          • If not missing the point, then at the very least forgetting that by the time Yates was there to be caught, i.e. ahead of him, Carapaz had done a number of attempts to drop Del Toro.

            In other words, it was my impression that Carapaz had emptied his own plate at the wrong time or too soon and not in the right place for his own good.

            That still leaves the possibility that Yates would´ve had better legs when it counted, no matter how Carapaz had raced technically – but it is far from certain that this would indeed have been the case.

          • Monday, when I said that Carapaz didn’t have the legs to catch Yates, that was after his attacks on Del Toro.
            Who knows what might have happened had Carapaz not attacked as early as he did on Finestre.

  4. I have an unrelated question that I’m unsure where to ask:

    The stage profiles always have climbs, sprint points, towns etc indicated as distance from the start. Yet, as a viewer following a broadcast, we’re told the distance from the finish. I’m fairly good at arithmetic, but it’s an extra step to calculate when interesting points will be coming up.

    Why the disparity?
    I can understand a rider and teams wanting to use distance from the start (I haven’t yet seen riders watching from their phones mid-race). But for the rest of us, is there another profile published with the distances inversed?

    I’m sure I’ll manage, but I’ve always found it curious.

    • The profiles are always this way just because they have been. But the roadbook and the race website’s timing shows distance in both directions.

      Reversing the distance on the profiles could work, it would not remove any information, or two scales could help too.

    • My recollection is fairly faint but I think the Giro had graphics which displayed both … to save you from having to do the mental arithmetic.
      What I couldn’t work out during the Giro is what the “calories” number was supposed to equate ti.

      • I may have been simplistic but I assumed that showed how many calories you would burn by cycling that distance and altitude gain.

        I found that quite interesting because it’s easy to compare with the recommended daily intake of about 2,500 – eg, this stage uses up 2 days’ energy.

  6. Interesting that the first rest day is only after stage 10, due to 14 July falling on a Monday. Will be some tired legs after that long first “week”.

    • There’s only so many mountains in France, so they have to tour the flat areas as well…

      That said, I do wish they’d include more ‘classics’ style stages each year. In fairness, there’s more than usual this year, with stages 4 & 6 having interesting finales.

      • What you say has no relation to the fact that the points GC has to be tilted in the favour of sprinters, that time-cuts are ever more generous in order to help sprinters, that teams are allowed to go to the Tour with sprinting as only race plan, or that more and more kms. get neutralised in order to make room for sprint train antics. And what you say is answereb by the absence of a systematic reflex in organisers that equates “flat country = we have to use unsurfaced roads, so that the peloton explodes 100% certainly, and we have a real race and not a so-called sprint stage”.

        • I’d like to see the young rider jersey binned – it’s not very interesting, especially these days – and the points jersey changed so that every stage has the same points value, thus making it a true test of most consistent rider. Then, you can have a sprinters jersey, where the points are loaded to favour the flat stages.

      • More classics-style stages and more medium mountains stages – same comment every year.
        Those are often the most interesting stages.
        And there are always too many flat stages.

    • I know you are being provocative but the sprinters probably have it tougher than ever this year, there are five probable sprint stages. There have been editions where you could have more sprints in the first week of the Tour than you’ll see in all three here.

      • I’m not being provocative. I have seen the change in status of sprinters, and the way they condition the race, over many decades. I can still remember pan-flat TdF stages being often won from the breakaway. I don’t accept that 6 or 8 (or more) teams ride those stages nowadays only to make sure there is a sprint, which, as you know, basically means boredom and high-speed danger. Of course organisers are starting to react to that kind of sprint-doomed racing, but they’re still far from getting decisive enough.

      • I just want the race to stop gravitating around them. If they’re fast, good for them. But if they want to win, they should do something more than wheelsuck all day and put their nose in the wind for 400 metres (after a dangerous cut-throat fight for position, rubbing at 60 km/h, that, no, I do not want to see at all).

        • But it is normal for some stages to be flat. And the teams have worked out the best strategy for winning those stages. However, if there weren’t so many flat stages, the teams might be less inclined to bring quite such a strong ‘train’, although if you have the fastest sprinter, or one of the top two or three, this is always going to be the easiest way to win stages.

          • It’s normal that there are flat stages. What’s absolutely not normal is that they finish systematically in a peloton sprint.

  8. I’m very much of the opinion that despite certain parts being organised years in advance that the route drawers still do their best every year to favour certain riders, usually those with the best chance of challenging that era’s dominant rider… or if there isn’t any, a rider who will tap into a new fan base for the sport…

    This one is interesting. How to combat Pog?

    Seems to me they’ve gone heavy on the climbs late in the race to try and play into his only really weakness – over-excitability/confidence? Should he wear himself out early JV has a chance to turn the tables late on, or multiple stages try and play the team game as he did a few years ago. *(The climbs are also there I assume to celebrate 50th Polka Dot)

    Obviously though this is a different Pog and the route could dramatically backfire – a flat first week could lead to a sedate opening and the GC could be over on the first few climbing stages making the last weeks a procession?

    Poor organisers really – since Pog’s team is now excellent and his preparation has gone up a level it’s tough to see what you can do to hold him back in the route? Maybe soon we’ll see a route with huge TT’s to favour Remco?

    The Jonas battle still intrigues me as The Cycling Podcast has mentioned multiple times that this is one of the longest running and most hotly contested rivalries in Tour De France history, and yet it’s still never played out for three weeks…? 2025 felt like the year this could finally happen but the truth seems to be that Pog’s level is so high that it is simply unobtainable for Vingegaard… I guess we’ll see in July!!

    Could be a very strange tour. I want it to be fireworks with a Pog win but I fear it will be washout with Pog win.

    • The only way I see an interesting GC battle is if Pog has a massive mishap early in the race. The organizers were wise to avoid a major GC stage early in the race, so it will probably be a race of two halves, with the big boys in the ascendancy early before the little guys leave them in the dust. But unless something strange happens to Pog, the race will be decided by the end of stage 14. I sure hope I’m wrong.

      • It’s likely too, we all saw the images from the Dauphiné. But all the more reason for other teams to plan around this. We know UAE are tactically weak because they don’t have to think much with Pogačar, this is a weakness to exploit. Especially as the team looked beatable at the Dauphiné, sure they’ll bring Almeida who provide plenty but one of the lesser reported points from the Dauphiné, and look at Suisse now, is how the team’s other riders are further back than you’d expect going by the last couple of years.

        Also I’d love to put the question to Visma-LAB’s management and Vingegaard and get an honest answer as to whether they’d sign today for second place. Sure it would mean an event-free Tour, Jonas makes it to Paris etc and big exposure for the sponsors, or would they be prepared to risk things to try and win too?

        • Using clever tactics is the biggest opportunity to beat Pog (outside of health issues/crash/bad TT/unforseen problem). It doesn’t look like Vinny can get close to matching him currently man on man.

        • I’m curious about how they will use Jorgenson, who is an interesting “joker” card to play. Ostensibly Almeida will be a better lieutenant for Pog, but I can also see Almeida having a “bad day” somewhere in the first week. It will be interesting to see if Visma go for two in the top ten or go all-or-nothing for Ving. If Visma are ready to accept second, they will have some good secondary and tertiary goals to focus on. Also, who knows what kind of form Yates will have?

        • Pogacar was tricked in the bordures in 2020, and wasn’t in the big escape of the Le Creusot stage in 2021. But none of the GC leaders were there neither… I remember UAE chased all day. I think it’s in this kind of stage that Pogacar can loose time, but I’m not sure there is such a stage in this TdF (maybe it can depend on the wind) and I think UAE expects Visma to attempt something like this, it will be harder to surprise them. Maybe Quick-Step will have more space ? Or just send Jorgenson in a stage like this, with Campenaerts and some big engines : if he takes 5 minutes we can have interesting things happening after. But like every year I’m dreaming…

        • Before the Dauphiné started I wrote that Visma would be glad for Vingegaard to sit on Pogacar’s wheel, and we know how that ended.
          Even with Visma’s team doing all the right things, when the road started to go uphill, Pogacar could drop Vingegaard without any problems.
          The biggest threat to Pogacar not winning the Tour is probably himself.

          • So if the Dauphine form is repeated, Visma need to focus less on mountain stages and more on circumstances/windy stages to beat Pog. And who knows take advantage in the moment with the likes of Soudal to put time into him.

    • The sketch of the route is usually in place with about 18 months to go, so earlier this year the outline of next year’s route had taken shape.

      The starting point is the grand départ location, obvious but they go from there. One hallmark of Christian Prudhomme’s Tours is the use of an imaginary line from Biarritz to Strasbourg, and the preference to be east/south of this line to find varied terrain. The race goes the other side for a lot this year but almost in compensation and almost seeking out every rise possible.

      Prudhomme also has lots of written notes saved on his computer about places, meetings with mayors, appropriate anniversaries to commemorate, that kind of thing and the “right” ones get copied into a folder called “Hypothèse privilégiée” (preferred outcome) from which the route is built.

      There’s less thought about Vingegaard’s climbing style or Pogačar’s abilities in heat here. But he and others like Thierry Gouvenou will aim for some kind of balance, eg how long should the time trial be, how many climbing metres etc.

      • The difficult part is that any big mountain stages are likely to weed out all but a few riders in the current peloton. The Tour de Suisse has been a great example of this, despite the massive screwup that left Almeida three minutes down after the first stage.

  9. The Giro had Palestinian flags at the side of the road, very prominently, every day – possibly the second most popular flag.
    Last year, the TdF had none and neither did the Olympics – the police must have spent a huge amount of time and resources confiscating them all.
    Will be interesting if they do this again this year.
    Right-wing ‘liberal’ governments like Macrons are very pro-Israel, so they probably will.

    • I saw plenty of flags at the Tour last summer, were any actually confiscated or is this just a hunch?

      For the Giro, one newspaper in Italy reported that the police came to remove some flags on a stage when the Giro reached Italy after the Albanian start. The paper says this got filmed, went viral with Facebook campaign groups which in turn encouraged more people with flags to turn out.

      • From my recollection – although I’ll admit I am about as far from objective as it’s possible to be on this issue – there were very few if any Palestinian flags at the TdF, hence my presumption that the police were confiscating them. Certainly, the contrast with this year’s Giro was massive.

        • Is there any reason to expect as many Palestinian flags on the roadside in France as in Italy?

          I mean, there could well be so called national or cultural differences at work here, i.e. other reasons than the police confiscating flags. The average citizen of the average activist in the two countries could have the same views re: the events, but more inclined to show up for the cameras during the GT in Italy than in France (where the typical protester is different and the cause of a different type?)?

    • I favour a “all or none approach” as selective outrage irks me. So many people in a froth about Gaza but happy to cheer for UAE as Pogi rides for them. Happily applaud riders from Bahrain yet quick to boo IPT. Be consistent or shut up.

      • I agree. I’m against all the teams owned/funded/promoting despotic regimes, although only two of those regimes have killed hundreds of thousands of people in the last decade, so I do feel more strongly about them.

      • IPT isn’t funded by the government is it, while BV and UAE are? That’s a distinction no? I don’t care for any of them or Ineos but then I like cycling more so….

  10. My sister and I have watched tdf for nearly 20 years
    We love everything about it and this year we are playing tour bingo, having croissants and watching spectacular scenery and fabulous gladiators. We can’t wait and of course netflix series 3 is on our agenda.

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