Seems like le tour is supporting Evan going for the Giro-Vuelta double next year. This course is not built for him.

I think it’s a very fun route.

you are right, the 1st flat week is on some very interesting roads at least.

For a Pyrennées Tour, I am content with the the two primary Alps stages:

I think the Colombiere, Aravis, Saisies, Madeleine stage has the possibility to be pretty epic. Despite the downhill finish (40 hairpins or so if on the main road), there is some serious climbing in this stage.

And Avoriaz has the potential to be a real furnace.

PS – My BBQ is canceled. The rumoured climb above my garden didn’t materialize. Bah!

I think it looks designed to make it as fair a duel as possible between Andy and Bert. Everyone else is in-consequential.

Whoever wins the 8 or 9 km prologue should be set for a week or so in yellow.

not even 60k worth of TT. Should be a fun watch though. Though I don’t see how Andy and Crash-a-lot Schleck would gain any time on Contador with some cobbles thrown in. If anything, a group, maybe with Armstrong, will slip away and the G.C. guys will be in a little group together about 20-30 seconds down

As we saw with the Vuelta this year, skinny GC guys have a tendency to get a tad nervous and crashy when crosswinds or cobbles are thrown into the equation. If Contador stays with Astana and the team is weak for the Tour, I can see the Shack and Saxo trying to exploit this weakness by trying to split the peloton at every turn in the road.

I think Columbia will be a weaker team, so if there are small splits, no one may be willing to help Contador and Astana chase back.

Also, I think Wiggins will get a rude awakening to his future as a GC guy with this route. He can still get a top 10, but I think CVV will be Garmin’s main weapon this year and best finisher.

I wonder if Proudhomme had an eye on the football World Cup in South Africa when creating the route. The World Cup final is on the same day as the first Alpine stage of Le Tour… I guess it makes sense to use up a bunch of flat stages while half the world’s attention is drawn to something else.

And how’s it possible that this will be only the second time that Tourmalet features as a mountain top finish of a Tour stage? I really thought it had to have been used more than once since rarely a year goes by without it in the route.

If not, the lead in to the cobbles should be a better than normal watch.

Salite.ch has this but the route summary mentions a 14 km climb to the finish?

because with rare exceptions the stages pre-billed as decisive don’t work out that way.

How much energy was wasted anticipating the massive gaps caused by the Cinque Terre ITT in the giro?

Who correctly guessed that the most important stages of the 09 TdF would happen in the first week?

So . . . the pundit challenge would more logically seem to be to correctly identify the places where the race will REALLY happen.

(And, given the challenges of the first week . . . I think this course is actually pretty good for Evans.)

all the GC guys finish together, that would be stage 16..did they not learn from this year? Otherwise a very nice route on paper, not as spectacular as the Giro but the Tour never is nor needs to be. But this route seems more suited to Bert than last year, more climbing and no TTT, which is a good thing for Bert next year, unless he ends up on Garmin.

I’ve always thought the tour should have some of this every year, and enough to strike some fear into the GC contenders. The overall winner should have the overall skills necessary to earn this reward.