Tour de France

Who Will Make The Cut?

If the 2017 Tour de France does end up on the HC calendar for 2017 then a maximum of 14 out of 20 teams can come from the World Tour, meaning at least four World Tour teams won’t get an invitation to ride the Tour de France. The Tour is the biggest race with huge media coverage but every year even the most assiduous follower can forget a certain team is in the event. With this in mind which teams could be left out come July 2017?

If you’re into Schadenfreude then this could be a fun exercise but the real story behind this is the panic it will sow among several teams and sponsors.

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Reviving The Mountains Competition

The mountains classification for the 2016 Tour de France is set to change. In recent years the points scale was doubled on the final summit finish of the day in a bid to tilt the competition towards the race’s bigger names but it’s meant the mountains jersey has become an afterthought. Chris Froome won the competition this year, a by-product of his fight for yellow. Now it seems points will be doubled on the final climb before a descent in a bid to tempt riders to sprint for the top and perhaps keep going, an incentive to aim for the jersey but also to attack over the top so once again yellow and polka-dot could be combined.

These constant changes mark a problem with the mountains prize, it’s a popular contest but one that seems to struggle to define itself.

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Further Thoughts on the Tour Route

Some more thoughts on the Tour de France route and the presentation earlier in the week. Once the presentation’s been digested and the profiles poured over there’s more to think about.

First up this is a route to look forward to and the closer your inspect it, the better it gets.

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The 2016 Tour de France

Tour de France 2016 map

The 2016 Tour de France route is out and the presentation even managed to spring a surprise with a second time trial that nobody had predicted. It’s a promising route that celebrates the mountains and includes several new climbs. Glance at the map alone and you’ll see it quickly escapes from France’s boring northern half. Here’s a closer look.

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The Tour de France Guessing Game

Every year the route of the Tour de France is the subject of a long guessing game before the official presentation of the route. It’s testimony to the race’s importance that many want to know next July’s route already. With the racing season ending it’s good to project to next summer.

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Friday Shorts


Richie Porte wants to ride the Tour de France and Olympics. “I didn’t leave Team Sky for BMC just to target the Giro d’Italia” he tells cyclingnews.com. This has always been the plan and it seems the idea is to keep Tejay van Garderen on his toes, to provide internal competition for him as well as one of the most well-funded teams in the sport simply being able to buy a strong leader like this. Rohan Dennis has to fit into this too.

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Book Review: The Yellow Jersey Club

The Yellow Jersey Club book cover

The Yellow Jersey Club by Edward Pickering

The premise is simple, a look at the last 20 Tour de France winners and Lance Armstrong. Each member of the “yellow jersey club” gets a chapter dedicated to their exploits. At times the 21 winners share little more than victory in the same race such is the range of personalities and career paths.

Better still this is not 21 versions of how the Tour was won with mechanical reproductions of Rider X attacking on Stage Y to take a time advantage of N minutes. Instead this is often a look at the different types of winner, their characters, personalities, tactics and career paths rather than any shared trait that defines a Tour winner.

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Roads to Race

There are more than 10,400 mountain passes in France according to the Club des 100 Cols, a touring group for French cyclists. Some are not accessible on a road bike but many are and provide options for the Tour de France which tends to stick to the same roads again and again. Here are ten alternatives, some novel and some forgotten…

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What Would Desgrange Do?

Cycling has to change. Too many races resemble each other and don’t attract the audiences they did 20 years ago. The economic model isn’t strong enough. Teams and races are struggling. We need change.

This could be a synthesis of Oleg Tinkov’s pinot noir induced Twitter rants but it could also sum up the state of cycling over a century ago. The Tour de France was born out of desperation, the mother of all newspaper promotion stunts and the event launched by Henri Desgrange in 1903 has become the greatest asset in pro cycling. Why? Because it makes people dream.

If you’ve got the post-Tour blues, it’s normal. July is what we want cycling to be, a summer party with the best riders and saturation coverage. August reminds us what pro cycling really is, with small races, patchy coverage and the white noise of scandal and bickering over money.

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Tour Stage 22 Preview

The 2016 Tour de France starts on Saturday 2 July with a 188km stage along the coastline and across Normandy before the finish in Sainte Marie du Mont, better known around the world as Utah Beach, one of the landing sites for the Allied Invasion of 1944. It’s a day for the sprinters. Perhaps we’ll see Mark Cavendish in the hunt for that elusive yellow jersey and a healthy Marcel Kittel in the mix.

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