With a week to go to the start in Bilbao, the full 2023 Tour de France guide is online, complete with stage profiles and comment on each day’s course, plus reference materials for the points and mountains competitions, time cuts and more, handy if you want more detail ahead of the race or during it.
Just go to inrng.com/tour for the next four weeks.
You’ll also find the link at the top of the page if you’re on a desktop, or on the drop-down menu for phone readers.
David Lappartient’s on the verge of heading the French Olympic Committee after the sudden resignation of its previous president, there’s an election next week. If members pick him it’ll be his eleventh role, not the eleventh move in his career, instead he could hold 11 concurrent jobs. Even he says this is unsustainable and it’s quite possible he’ll stand down from the UCI in 2025. The race is on for the next UCI President.
The Netflix Tour de France series is out. It’s entertaining at times but don’t expect any great insights or art.
Warning: spoilers
Normally these race reviews try to pick a defining moment when the race was won but this week saw Jonas Vingegaard dominate the Dauphiné, he was giving sprint lead outs one day, putting time into all his rivals the next in the TT, then taking the yellow jersey the next day and winning a mountain stage for good measure while in yellow.
Still for the sake of tradition let’s pick his win in Salins-les-Bains on Stage 5 where he followed Richard Carapaz up the last climb only for Carapaz to realise he just couldn’t sustain the effort, leaving Vingegaard alone and away for the stage win and yellow jersey. It wasn’t a vintage edition but a review and some thoughts all the same.
They’ve saved the best for last with a course that’s as fun to ride on a summer’s day as it should be to race, or watch. There’s the Chartreuse trilogy and then the return of the Bastille above Grenoble.
The race goes wild in the Alps with the first of two tough stages. Don’t miss the early start and finish.
The Critérium du Dauphiné goes to Salins today, a small spa town that’s seen better days. It’s a long way from the race’s traditional home of the Dauphiné, an old kingdom in the Alps. Seeing the race ranging so far has made a few people wonder about this race’s identity as one day it’s showcasing the volcanoes of the Auvergne, then it’s visiting a spa town in the Bourgogne-Franche-Comté region. Is it really a Critérium du Dauphiné?
The Dauphiné goes as far from the original Dauphiné region as you can get with a trip to the spa town of Salins and with it, a tough late climb.
