“There has never been such a tough start on the Tour,” says Christian Prudhomme, the director of the Grande Boucle, satisfied because he will have a fight from day one, convinced that it would be irresponsible on his part to have so many stars, the two most of the moment (Vingegaard and Pogacar), but also the spectacular Van der Poel, Van Aert, Laporte, Girmay, Pidcock and Alaphilippe, and not give them ground to show off. It is the greatest indication that the organization has definitively abandoned orthodoxy. The Tour, which had always been the guarantor of the essences in balanced layouts and the defender of conventionality, has lost its mind. This Tour, this edition that leaves Bilbao, is upside down.
Perhaps imbued with the spirit of Ocaña now that it is 50 years since his victory, the Tour has broken all its unwritten rules. It is possible that in the second stage, after crowning Pike 10 km from the finish line in Bilbao and climbing Jaizkibel before entering San Sebastián, the leader may already be one of the favourites.
And it doesn’t end here. In the first week there are up to five stages in which the applicants are called to be protagonists. The first two Basque days are followed by the two Pyrenean stages. On the fifth day the Marie Blanque arrives and on the sixth the Tourmalet awaits. The return of the Puy de Dôme has been planned for the second Sunday. The volcano reappears 35 years later, with the last 4 km, the hardest of the climb, closed to the public to protect the environment.
Normally in the first week you can lose the Tour, it is said. This time, in the first week there is so much hardship that it is possible to win the most important race of three weeks.
From the Guggenheim and San Mamés to the Champs-Élysées, it passes through the five mountainous blocks of the hexagon: the Pyrenees, the Massif Central, the Jura, the Alps and the Vosges, the scene of the battle on the penultimate day.
In this constant search for brightness and exhibitions, there are only three quiet days in a row (10, 11 and 12), until the mountain arrives again, with the Grand Colombier, coinciding with July 14, the day of the national holiday French.
In the Alps there will be more steep passes: Col de la Ramaz, the Joux-Plane, Sant Gervais Mont-Blanc and the kilometer-long Col de la Loze. Even the only time trial has been disguised as a time trial, with two hard climbs in just 22 km, the only ones there will be.
In 1998, the year in which the purest climber, Pantani, won the yellow jersey, it was a 116.6 km time trial. El Pirata lost more than seven and a half minutes with Ullrich. And still the Italian destroyed him. The routes with the goat have gradually decreased in the 21st century. It is no coincidence that the 2019 Tour had the minimum, with 27.2, which was won by Bernal, the first Colombian. The only logical thing is that it ends in Paris, unlike that of 2024.
