The first day after a rest day can be dangerous and so many riders will be pleased to know that there will be no big mountain stage on the menu when the riders get back in the saddle after their first day off. Stage 10 should give the GC riders a chance to ease back into competition but that’s definitely not the case for the sprinters. They don’t have many opportunities left and so they will go all in to get a bunch sprint in the well-known, tricky finale in Revel. However, a big mountain at the start of the race and the final challenge of Cote de Saint-Ferreol will do nothing to make it easy for the fast finishers.
The 197km course is the start of the traditional journey between the Pyrenees and the Alps and will see the riders travel from the Andorran city of Escaldes Engordany in the middle of the mountains to Revel. Throughout most of the stage, they will be riding in a northerly direction and they will get things off to a brutal start. Right from the beginning, they will go up the category 1 Port d’Envalira (22.6km, 5.5%) whose top sits at 2408m and so is the highest point of this year’s race. The lower slopes are pretty easy but the final 5.6km are much tougher with gradients of 6-8%.
After the climb, the riders will descend out of the Pyrenean heartland and return to the completely flat terrain in the area north of the mountains. There won’t be any challenges and the highlight will be the intermediate sprint which comes at the 122.5km mark. It’s very straightforward and comes on a long, straight, flat road. From there, the riders will continue along flat roads until they are very close to the outskirts of Revel.
Instead of heading straight to the finish, the riders will do as they always do here. A small loop on the southeastern outskirts of the city will see them go up the category 3 Cote de Saint-Ferreol (1.8km, 6.6%) just 7km from the finish. From there, they will descend to the final 3km which are flat. The descent is a bit technical but the final 3200m are almost completely straight and flat, with just two turns in very quick succession 600m from the line. The finishing straight is 6m wide.
The finale is a well-known one as it was used in both 2005 and 2010. On both occasions, the sprinters failed to bring it back together for a bunch sprint so the pure sprinters will be a bit uncertain about their chances, especially with such a tough start. On the other hand, it’s a big goal for riders like John Degenkolb, Alexander Kristoff and Michael Matthews and it would be a bit of a failure if they don’t try to bring it back together. That doesn’t mean that they will be successful, especially if a strong group escapes from the start. Hence, this stage could both be won by a long-distance breakaway like it did in 2005, by a late attacker like it did in 2010 and in a reduced bunch sprint.
In 2010, Alexandre Vinokourov attacked on the final climb and reached the finish with a 13-second advantage before Mark Cavendish beat Alessandro Petacchi in the sprint for second. In 2005, Paolo Savoldelli emerged as the strongest from a breakaway while Jan Ullrich famously went on the attack on the final climb. He failed to drop Lance Armstrong but Floyd Landis lost 20 seconds on a day when the early breakaway arrived with an advantage of more than 22 minutes. In 2000, Erik Dekker was the strongest from an early breakaway.
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