The first Stage on French soil isn’t a walk in the part. Starting in Super Barèges, the riders tackle a series of climbs in the Pyrenees before finishing on the Streets in Lourdes.
Easy to describe, but very hard to organize it and even harder to race it! Starting at 1734 meters, the riders start going downhill for 20 km into Sainte-Marle de Campan before making a U-Turn… and start climbing back to Super Barèges. Thi...
Read moreThe first Stage on French soil isn’t a walk in the part. Starting in Super Barèges, the riders tackle a series of climbs in the Pyrenees before finishing on the Streets in Lourdes.
Easy to describe, but very hard to organize it and even harder to race it! Starting at 1734 meters, the riders start going downhill for 20 km into Sainte-Marle de Campan before making a U-Turn… and start climbing back to Super Barèges. This 20 km monster climb will be one of the hardest parts of the Stage, but with still 70 km to go, anything can happen.
The riders then go down into Les Astes and then start climbing the Luz Ardiden climb. Since the Ski resort has only 1 narrow road up, the last 3 kms don’t feature on the Tour since the riders turn right to start the descend into the valley. Still, this 7 km climb at 9,8% will for sure split the peloton apart.
From there until Lourdes there is hardly any difficulty until the last 10 km where the small incline into Omex will bring the riders to the final 4 km. From there, it will be a fast downhill
