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Not Official: No Galibier and telegraphe in le tour?

Jul 29, 2012
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Rock slides apprently, not official yet.

ASO plans to reuse Col di Glandon eller Col de la Croix-de-Fer so stage will end on Alpe dHuez. Detour in the Maurienne valley.

Libertine, how would the profile look like then? Or someone?

The original profile was this

2015_20.png


Something like this? At least for the last part of it

profil_11.gif
 
Jun 30, 2014
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Re:

Sciocco said:
They should make it an Alpe MTT.
That would kill the racing on stage 19, the top gc riders would just try to save energy for the final MTT.
But I always love a MTT, it's always a great spectacle for the fans and an awesome display of strength and willpower.
 
Gigs_98 said:
this is a version with croix de fer but with villard notre dame directly before the alp (this one which is extremely unlikely but I would like it)
75pQ0cu.png

Is that...The Col du Solude on the mountain opposite Alpe d'Huez? Love that one, crazy tunnels and certain death to your left most of the way. :D

Most likely they try to keep the spirit of the planned stage and do Mollard->Croix-de-Fer. The flat before Huez kind of ruins the pacing they had planned for the stage, however it's probably the best way to do it.

If they really wanted to spice it up they could have been backed into worse spots. The Maurienne valley has so many options it's quite easy really. They could climb the Mollard, descend back down the valley and then do Croix-de-Fer or Glandon north. Hell, they could do Chaussy - Glandon again without the silly flat from the previous stage (and use Lacets de Montvernier again for a double whammy of switchbacks if they are so inclined).

Still, only good racing will excuse all these Maurienne valley stages. Now they have three of those instead of two which already was strange. The local tourist board sure won't mind. I was going to complain we weren't seeing any mountains north of the Madeleine this year, but we're getting Allos/Pra-Loup which we hadn't seen in a while. I just wish they'd try doing a full tour of the French alps one of these years. I mean something like starting with Allos or Bonnete on the first day and ending it in Morzine over 3/4 stages. There's just so much that can be done it sucks to see Toussuire/Huez every 2/3 years. Bring back Iseran and Val Thorens! :D
 
Re: Re:

BigMac said:
Gigs_98 said:
BigMac said:
Am I the only one happy? This means there's no *** Lautaret descent to the Bourg-d'Oisans.
the flat between croix de fer and bourg d´Oisans isn't much better

At least it' plain flat. Not a pretentious false flat. I really dislike it, plus looks odd on the profiles.
IMO the biggest problem of alp d huez is that no matter if you come from the galibier or from the glandon, there is no case where the penultimate climb directly leads to the mtf.
ps: if you mean the tunnels you can see on the profile, when you say the profile looks odd, go to the official website because there is already a better profile.
 
Re: Re:

Gigs_98 said:
BigMac said:
Gigs_98 said:
BigMac said:
Am I the only one happy? This means there's no *** Lautaret descent to the Bourg-d'Oisans.
the flat between croix de fer and bourg d´Oisans isn't much better

At least it' plain flat. Not a pretentious false flat. I really dislike it, plus looks odd on the profiles.
IMO the biggest problem of alp d huez is that no matter if you come from the galibier or from the glandon, there is no case where the penultimate climb directly leads to the mtf.
ps: if you mean the tunnels you can see on the profile, when you say the profile looks odd, go to the official website because there is already a better profile.

That's true.

No, I don't mean the tunnels, I really mean the long descent leading to Alpe looks bad on the profile.

Cheers.
 
MikeTichondrius said:
Still, only good racing will excuse all these Maurienne valley stages. Now they have three of those instead of two which already was strange. The local tourist board sure won't mind. I was going to complain we weren't seeing any mountains north of the Madeleine this year, but we're getting Allos/Pra-Loup which we hadn't seen in a while. I just wish they'd try doing a full tour of the French alps one of these years. I mean something like starting with Allos or Bonnete on the first day and ending it in Morzine over 3/4 stages. There's just so much that can be done it sucks to see Toussuire/Huez every 2/3 years. Bring back Iseran and Val Thorens! :D
They want to make the Alps just as predictable and limited as the Pyrenées where it's always exactly the same few climbs in Midi-Pyrenées and never anything east of Port de Pailhères - this year they're going further west than usual with Pierre-Saint-Martin, but they're going Unipuerto with this to make sure there isn't any accidental discovery of anything good west of Marie-Blanque.

Appreciate that the regions that pay the most get the most visits, but the Tour seems to be a lot more predictable even than it used to be in respect of the areas it uses in the mountains. Lots of self-repetition. They havent's been south of Bonette since 2008, and even then they went into Italy for it. Semnoz in 2013 was at least an attempt at something new further north, and of course in the Jura they added Grand-Colombier, albeit in an appallingly-designed mess of a stage, in 2012 (had it been the last mountain stage in the range it wouldn't have been such a bad design, mind). Morzine area not seen in a few years though. I love the Madeleine, it's one of the few big name Tour climbs I'm not sick to death of, but could do with revisiting the likes of Cormet de Roseland (Col du Pré?), and all of the Trois Vallées climbs (Val Thorens, Méribel-Mottaret and Courchevel). How about La Plagne? It's been a while since we had that. Would be nice to see something like Collet d'Allevard (it can host the Dauphiné as it did back in 2011, so it must be at least close to having enough room for the Tour?).

Of course, it's been a looooong time since we had meaning climbs of more than 3km in the Massif Central. Can we have a Col de Béal/Chalmazel stage with the Chansert-Béal double? How about Col de l'Œillon, that's a really nice climb. There's more that can be done than just Super-Besse and Montée Laurent Jalabert - even without places paying for mountaintop finishes.
 
Am I the only one who's in favour of ditching or nuking this overused, overrated *** climb with always too much flat before it altogether? Let em find some new good climbs in the Alps, they're there, but the Tour naturally has to use all the same boring, overused *** climbs over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again
 
Hard to believe that the last time we saw the galibier was in 2011 so its not even really overused in the last few years. However IMO the biggest problem of the tour is alp d´Huez. It is the reason why everything north the maurienne valley is hardly ever used because the aso likes to put alp d´Huez on the last big day in the alps (2008, 2011, 2015) with only one exception in the last 9 years which was 2013. However in 2013 the problem was that the stage to Semnoz which was also not really good as the last mountain stage of a gt. The stage to le grand bornand the day before was much better but between two mtf´s which also kind of killed the action. The last time the aso managed to make three days in the alps with Alp d´Huez which really worked was in 2006 with Alp d`Huez - La Toussuire - Morzine.
Btw what happened to the joux plane? Its one of the best HC climbs in france because of its steepness and if the aso really doesn't like to finish the alps with a downhill finish they could still combine the joux plane with avoriaz. That would be pretty good I think.
 

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