The day of the unveiling of the next years Tour de France route is a double edged sword for me. It's always exciting to see what the new route is going to be, to see what parts of France they'll visit, what mountains they'll climb and from it all decipher what kind of contender it suits best. On the other hand it's like a kid getting to see his Christmas present in March before it's put away again for the next nine months.
Yesterday the route for the 2014 Tour de France was released, but there's little point me banging on about how great it looks and how excited I am for next July. I say that virtually every year because there's no such thing as a bad Tour de France. That is unless the organisors decided to skip the mountains altogether and give us twenty-one stages of bunch sprints. Mark Cavendish might beg to differ, however.
The 101st edition of the race will begin on Saturday, July 5th from England as we already knew -- the first three stages in Britain had already been announced some months before -- and will cover 21 stages for a total distance of 3,656 kilometres. There's nine flat stages in all, five hilly stages, six mountain stages, one 54-kilometre time-trial, two rest days, and nine new stage cities.
The new stage cities are Leeds, Harrogate, York, Sheffield, Cambridge, Ypres, Oyonnax, Risoul, and Mauborguet Pays du Val d'Adour.
The biggest news is that there is just the one individual time-trial and that won't be contested until after all the mountains have been climbed and just before the riders make their way to Paris. It could well decide who wins the race but anyone relying on it to win the Tour might be in trouble. It's the first time there has been just a single time-trial in the Tour de France since 1953 when Louison Bobet won the race, and the shortest distance of time-trialing in the Tour since the discipline was introduced to the race in 1934.
Miguel Indurain and Sir Bradley Wiggins would not be impressed.
This kind of a tour opens the door for a pure climber to try win the event, someone like the young Mauro Quintana who burst onto the scene at this past years Tour. Of course, Chris Froome will remain a favorite given that last year he proved to be the best climber and also the best against the clock among the big favorites. Vincenzo Nibali who didn't ride in 2013 -- opting to win the Giro d'Italia instead -- could well be in the mix given his ability in both disciplines. And there will be a large handful of others hoping to go the distance as well.
A promising route, but I must admit I remain disappointed that the organisors have yet to feel the urge to put in a downhill time-trial, something never seen before and something that would prove amazing to watch. Climbing and time-trialing are all important disciplines to winning the Tour, but as Wiggins and Thibault Pinot have shown us this past year, so too is going down a mountain.
One interesting element that is being thrown into the route for 2014 is cobbles. The race organisation have put in a stage that covers some of the cobble sections from the Paris-Roubaix classic and that could very well prove to be a crucial early stage in the race. The bunch will split, some big names will be caught out and if it decides to rain that day it could prove chaotic. The fan seeking to be entertained can only hope for so much.
The introduction of cobbles for next years race will ensure that a number of the Grand Tour specialists -- namely Froome -- show up to the 2014 Paris-Roubiax and take the race seriously. Normally a race reserved for the toughest of single-day classic riders, such as Fabian Cancellara or Tom Boonen, will also feature the little men of the peloton looking to race it, toughen up and see what they'll be in for come July. That Paris-Roubaix will be a fascinating insight into who might gain and early edge come the Tour.
And while in the north-east of France and south-west of Belgium, the race will visit the town of Ypres for the first time and pay respect to the 100th anniversary of the start of the Great War. Ypres was a town in which half a million men died around during the war and the town in which chemical weapons were first used by German troops. The race will also visit Chemin des Dames ridge where unexploded shells still exist before visiting the Verdun battlefields where 700,000 were killed or wounded in battle.
The geography of the route and the history of some places it will visit in 2014 aside, I haven't really looked too closely over all the individual stages, the climbs, the profile of the time-trial, the distances of certain stages and the likelihood of cross-winds in certain places, to definitively say who has the best chance of winning the Tour. I could and I could make an educated guess but if I were to create any shortlist it would likely contain the names I would shortlist anyway. And besides, a race like the Tour de France throws up far too many intangibles over its three weeks that makes it impossible for someone to accurately predict who should win it. That's the beauty of the sport and of this race. You can create your short list but after that it's a toss up.
One stage I did check out and that jumped out was stage 10. A brute of a day that will see the riders go over six mountain passes that will no doubt leave the race shattered in pieces before the best of the best are left to duel it out on the final climb to La Planche des Belles Filles -- first scaled in 2012 and won by Chris Froome.
"It's a real mountain stage," said race director Christian Prudhomme.
