Tadej Pogacar in yellow on the Champs-Elysées on September 20, 2020. -
Marco Bertorello / AFP
It's back on the Tour route.
Finally in a few months, but everyone can already dream and choose their favorite stages since the route for the 2021 edition has been unveiled this evening.
It will be 3,383 kilometers long.
The Ventoux twice, the privileged Pyrenees, two individual time trials: the race, which will start on June 26 from Brest, will be very different from the last edition which was the most mountainous in its recent history.
“You have to be pragmatic,” insisted its director Christian Prudhomme, who was forced to review his initial copy after the change of site of the Grand Départ, linked to the coronavirus.
Initially planned for Copenhagen, it will finally be given in Brittany, the host region for the first four stages, with the consequence of modifying the first third of the route.
The route of the Tour de France 2021. - AFP / ASO
The double climb of Ventoux
Great novelty of the Tour 2021, the Mont Chauve will be climbed for the first time from Sault, its lesser-known side (only once in the history of the Tour), then in its entirety on the southern slope from Bédoin after the descent from the north side.
"The Ventoux in all its faces", summarized to AFP Christian Prudhomme who opted for an arrival at the bottom of the descent, in Malaucène (Vaucluse).
Mainly to disseminate the public over the largest possible area, five years after a chaotic arrival at Chalet Reynard, where the yellow jersey Chris Froome had been stuck in a traffic jam caused by the wave of the public and had run while waiting to be repaired.
The Tour will thus return to one of its emblematic climbs, in a year without any alpine climb of the same order.
Two days, in Le Grand-Bornand and in Tignes (a return lift for the private Savoy resort of the race in 2019 for lack of a practicable road), are planned in the Alps, logically softened since they are this time the first of the two great massifs.
The privileged Pyrenees
Five stages in the Pyrenees, including two typical adventurers to reach Quillan, after the visit of the Cathar castles, and Saint-Gaudens: there are three major stages left for climbers, in Andorra la Vella for the only incursion abroad before the second day of rest, at the Col du Portet and Luz-Ardiden (after the Tourmalet), two long and spectacular climbs.
Christian Prudhomme tried to vary for the six mountain stages, between the finishes at the top - three - which often give rise to a locked race until the very last kilometers and the finishes at the bottom of the descent.
“To extend the range of maximum interest a little more,” explains the director of the Tour.
The same concern for variety applies to the first week.
Brittany has two stages for puncheurs, in Landerneau and Mûr-de-Bretagne (blessed bread for the world champion Julian Alaphilippe), two others for sprinters.
“The intention is not to have more than two consecutive plain stages for the sprinters,” confirms Christian Prudhomme.
Hence the time trial of the first week entirely on the plain up to the Morvan tackled on the seventh day of the race (Le Creusot).
Two individual times
The Tour returns to its forgotten tradition of two individual time trials, the first in Laval on the fifth day, the second in the prestigious Bordeaux vineyards between Libourne and Saint-Emilion, on the eve of the finish judged as always on the Champs-Elysées, July 18.
The total of the two lap times - flat - gives 58 kilometers, the longest distance since 2013 (65 km), significantly higher than the figures of the last editions (36 km in 2020, 27 km in 2019).
Does the set benefit a runner type?
"I do not know if we can draw conclusions from the season if not that the youth arrives in a sensational way," said the director of the Tour.
"It is a period of uncertainty on all fronts, and also on what will give the results of the competitions".
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