HeyItsSara

The ladies course has some famous climbs but the mens does not. Yawn. I'm not sure I wanted to look at boring countryside for 3 weeks. Anyone?

slcbob

Rabble rouser

diphthong

the route finally (re)includes puy de dôme. good enuff for me.

sincos

OK, I guess I'll play the cranky git this time. I am not a fan of Christian Prudhomme TdF routes, and in that respect this one doesn't disappoint. The stages are ridiculously short, no long mountain stages, no tests of recovery in the 3rd week after long, hard stages in the previous 2, 22 km of TT?!?. I know it's all about the viewership for Prudhomme, you don't want to make a selection early, you want to keep the time gaps small late in the race so you don't lose your TV audience, you don't want to bore them with TTs. And there are some things I like: the relatively short transfers, the Col de la Loze should be interesting, the Puy de Dome, of course. But come on, this is the Tour de France, not the Tour de l'Avenir. Happy to see the Tourmalet in the TdFF though (and in this race as well).

slcbob

I haven't looked closely at the route. Yet. Reading your comments, sincos , I tend to follow and agree with most of what you're saying but I'm not sure how I feel about short stages. La Vuelta likes them and they can be appetizingly brutal affairs at times. Good viewing, not a lot of recovery going on; the riders make the race. We'll see how it goes. Prudhomme sure has gone surprisingly all in on them this edition -- two in the 130s and a couple more not much longer. I guess that, come August, I'll have an evolved opinion on what multiple short stages do to a race.

I was surprised to see this snippet on Le Tour site: "Bonus points will be located on passes or summits at strategic points along the route. The first three classified riders will be awarded bonuses of 8, 5 and 2 seconds, respectively (subject to approval by the International Cycling Union). These bonus points will not count towards the points classification." Those are some pretty healthy time bonuses for intermediate mountain points. Going all in on the "climber's tour"?

sincos

I don't have a problem with short mountain stages, in fact I think it's good to throw one in now and then. Certainly they favor some types of riders over others (Evenepoel?) Just not all the time. Besides, we already have a GT full of those, as you note. But long and hard? Not so much in the Tour these days (the Giro sometimes, but that too often seems to be set up as a sort of 3-week long Fleche Wallonne these days. I like the Fleche, but one's enough, and not for a GT)

diphthong

looking at the route and semi at the actual deets, we could have 4-10 guys within two minutes of the yellow jersey before the start of stage twenty. that is not necessarily a bad thang.

but the tdf is my least fave of the three gt's. they can or can't do whatever. happy they're finally bringing back puy de dôme but will honestly be more excited for the gt bookends-the giro and la vuelta.

sincos

Speaking of the Giro, I rather like the route for next year, with week 2 bookended by the Gran Sasso and Great St Bernard to keep the race honest, instead of all the GC contenders saving their effort for the last few stages. RCS kind of tried that this year, with Mt Etna and the Blockhaus, but with no real conviction -- Etna was preceded by a rest day and followed by two mildly ridiculous stages where 97 and 153 riders finished on the winning time, while the Blockhaus was preceded by a circuit race (highly entertaining, but of the possible top 10 only Martin made a go of it) and followed by a rest day. Lopez defended hard but none of the GC contenders really thought he was going to hold on to it so could wait until the last few Alpine stages. Next year has GC contention almost throughout, with time trials and big mountains in the middle as well as at the end. I could quibble and wish that one of the flat TTs was a bit more twisty or lumpy and that at least one mountain stage had a fast, technical downhill finish, but overall, I like it.

diphthong

have enjoyed the routes in the last decade or so since we survived the double whammy of the cipollini/petacchi 8-10 drag racing, sprint stages (not classics-styled stages + straight sprint stages, mind you).
a little more inventive, a little more creative and the giro has hardly been accused of treating the riders well recently.

darkmoon

TdF 2003 route
It looks like "Across France".
8 mountain stages, and 4 of 8 finish at the summit of the pass.
The route looks in favor of climbers.

Hmmm, a cyclist who gets this jersey will be a strong favorite.



TdF KoM podium jersey
1988 Steven Rooks