The 2020 Tour de France route is about to be announced, even if much of it has already been leaked. They've just begun proceedings by having various riders on the stage. Froome is there and was walking with a noticeable limp. Bardet is wearing a jacket / brown roll neck combo. Oh, Romain.
Apart from that, I broadly like the route. Lot of climbing in the first week including Orcieres Merlette for the first time in years, which feels pleasingly old school and Mont Aigoual, famous for its appearance in The Rider but neither of the Pyrenean stages are summit finishes and I don't think they don't go over 2000 metres until the Madeline on stage 17 to Meribel. Only one time trial, Planche des Belles Filles on the final Saturday, and they're only going to the traditional finish rather than the gravel track they used this year. That noise you hear is Dumoulin and Roglic ringing the Jumbo Visma management to ask who gets leadership at the Giro.
The Etape is the second stage around Nice, though that had been announced a couple of weeks back. No major changes to any of the race classifications by the sound of it.
Most comments I've seen are about the technical aspects of the route (on which I agree with longeared) but what jumped out at me is that the entire Tour bar two stages (one of which is the final stage, the other the time trial) is in the southern half of France. There can't have been many Tours missing such a large chunk of the country.
It's like a geographically more extreme version of the 2009 or 2016 routes.
In other news I see Rohan Dennis has been linked to INEOS, with a view to initally preparing for the Olympics and later advancing to contend for GC in Grand Tours. Why on earth does he think that might be the best team to do that? He turns 30 next summer and has never shown any abilities that suggest he's going to be a serious contender over three weeks. They've already got a fuckton of GC riders, most of whom are younger than him, and at best he'd end up as the new Poels.
Taylor Phinney has retired. Never the same after that crash, but he's effectively admitted that part of the problem was not a lack of talent but rather not working hard enough.
Being reported that Cavendish's contract is only for one year, which suggests he'll retire at the end of next season if he doesn't find some sort of form. He might manage a big win somewhere, but realistically he looks done.
Not looked at that Giro route in any detail, but the standouts are that huge transfer from Hungary to Sicily which will be a logistical pain for many given that there isn't a rest day in between - it's about 1650km by road. Also using the Agnello and Izoard on the final mountain stage is ... brave.
Exciting news of the week was Cofidis (provisionally) getting back on the World Tour and Dimension Data managing to hang on to their place.
Raymond Poulidor has died aged 83. He won the 1964 Vuelta and finished on the Tour de France podium eight times without ever winning the thing. He came close on occasion, his battle with Anquetil in 1964 is one of the greatest Tours ever and on the Puy de Dome produced probably the most famous photo in the history of the sport.
He should have won in 1966, but Anquetil marked him out of the race and the unheralded Lucien Aimar took the win. Famously he never even wore the yellow jersey at all, he came so close in the 1967 prologue but was beaten by a fraction of a second. After he retired he was a regular on the race even up to this year, wearing a yellow polo shirt - anyone who's ever been to the race will have seen him being driven around in a car with his name on. He was one of France's great sporting heroes. Merci Poupou.
L'Equipe have put together a lovely series of images from his life, including an appearance on Superstars in 1976 and reminding me that he was also MVdP's grandfather.
In a somewhat unfortunate piece of timing, this news was released while Ag2r were holding a press conference to announce Bardet is doing the Giro next summer and will be missing the Tour entirely. Oh, Romain.
Comment