Tour de France Preview – The Route
Posted June 28, 2011
The year has positively flown by and the second of July is fast bearing down upon us. The Tour de France is undoubtedly the biggest race in cycling; 3 weeks of pain, suffering and fun – and don’t we just love it. The Tour de France is a legendary event in the world of sport, one of the toughest sporting challenges to face professional athletes. The whirlwind of the Tour is intriguing, a fast and frenetic sporting spectacle which has captured the imagination and hearts of a loyal fan base yet still remains accessible to anyone who takes a sporting interest.
This years route kicks off in an interesting fashion; with no prologue this year the riders will tackle 191km including a pass over the Passage du Gois, an exposed course way which became infamous in Tour de France history in 1999, when a large pile up effectively ended favourite Alex Zulle’s title hopes before the Tour had ever really begun.
Stage 1 also features an uphill finish, giving punchy riders such as Philippe Gilbert and Simon Gerrans a shot at wearing the first yellow jersey of the 2011 Tour.
The second stage is a 23km team time trial (TTT) which always allows teams to demonstrate their strength in depth and technical abilities, teams likely to come to the fore include Team Sky, Garmin-Cervelo, HTC-Highroad and Team Liquigas. This stage will allows strong teams to give their GC contenders an early advantage, while for others the day will be all about damage limitation.
The next real test for the GC favourites is likely to come on stage 8, after a few flat and lumpy stages have let the likes of Cavendish, Hushovd, Haussler, Swift and their rouleurs have their day. Stage 8 sees a slowly climbing route, which although it only features on category 2 climb, 2 category 4’s and a category 3 finish barely has a flat kilometre along the route, and so it’s likely that a small group of favourites will arrive at the finish, and it’ll be all change in the race’s top 20.
Stage 9 is another testing day with 8 categorised climbs, it’s likely that we’ll see the GC guys sitting in here, allowing a break to make it to the finish. Stage 12 is where things really start to hot up, a gently climbing first 120kms are followed by a category one climb, before the ascent of the mystical hors category Col du Tourmalet and a finish atop Luz-Ardiden; there’s no doubt that stage 12 will present us with our real contenders and it’s likely that only 2 or 3 riders will really be in contention at the end of the day.
The 168.5km epic stage 14 features no less than 6 categorised climbs, only one of which is below a category 2. The route concludes with a summit finish at Plateau de Beille at an impressive 1,780m of elevation. Of the three winners atop the Plateau de Beille, all have gone on to clinch yellow in Paris: Pantani in 1998, Armstrong in 2002 an Contador in 2007; the winner here is also highly likely to continue this trend.
Stage 20 is an individual time trial (TT), covering 42.5km around the Grenoble region. The course is rolling and features a few small climbs, making it suited to riders such as Cancellara, Contador, Martin, Wiggins and Boassan-Hagen. We’d expect a specialist to take the day; the favourites will be competing for podium places and seconds here, although the likelihood of a showdown such as in 2010 is also on the cards.
Tune in for the second part of Daily Cycle’s Tour de France Preview!
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