Doping Draft parcours
stages 1-10 and
stages 11-21.
And now, something you may not have expected.
Stage 4: Bayonne - Luz Ardiden, 222km
GPM:
Côte de Lys (cat.3) 3,4km @ 5,5%
Col du Tourmalet (HC) 23,0km @ 6,3%
Luz Ardiden (HC) 13,9km @ 7,4%
While we may be leaving the Basque country behind after the initial Grand Départ, that's not to say we're leaving the people of the region behind, as the fourth stage of the race, and the first to be held entirely within France, remains a Basque affair. Having had four of the five main cities of the Basque region - Bilbao, Vitória-Gasteiz, Pamplona and San Sebastián - host the race over the first three days, it feels only right that we should start stage four in the fifth of these, the Bayonne-Anglet-Biarritz métropole (often abbreviated to BAB). And of these, Bayonne (Baiona to Basques) is the clear leading candidate. The French-Basque region hosts the Tour fairly infrequently, and the last time Bayonne itself was a stage host was 2003, in a
transitional stage from Pau won by Tyler Hamilton in a solo break. In the opposite direction, a similarly transitional stage from Cambo-les-Bains to Pau took place in 2006, but never anything as GC-relevant as we're about to embark upon, as we travel from the de facto capital of the French-Basque regions to the de facto Basque Mountain, Luz Ardiden.
With its scenic old town, bridges over the Adour and dramatic cathedral, Bayonne is an attractive town just inland from the beach resort of Biarritz; the match between the two cities' teams is one of the biggest rivalry games in French rugby. We're not celebrating the big, beefy men of rugby here, however, as the stage is more designed for the wispy climbers, who will not be used to getting the chance to take such a major win and such a major amount of time so early in a Tour de France as they do today - however, this is the ONLY Pyrenean mountain stage, so they will need to make use of it better than the likes of Andy Schleck did in 2011. This is a long stage, but backloaded with some serious climbing, including my personal bête-noire of French cycling.
We traverse the whole of the Pyrenées-Atlantiques département from west to east in this stage, taking us through all three Iparraldean provinces, Lapurdi (Labourd), Nafarroa Beherea (Basse-Navarre) and Zuberoa (Soule) before heading into the more Occitan-aligned Béarn area centred around perennial Tour host Pau, through typical northern Basque scenery, a little less mountainous but no less charming than its Spanish counterpart, with similar white-and-red housing, traditional Basque fonts and of course, since this is the Tour de France, it wouldn't be complete without a château or two...
...or the occasional fortified medieval village, such as Navarrenx pictured here, along with Ainhoa that we passed through yesterday another of the protected 'plus beaux villages de France' group.
The 1992 Tour that I used as an inspiration for this design (or rather, producing something better than that was the inspiration) didn't have a single Pyrenean mountain stage, only using the Marie-Blanque when finishing a transitional stage in Pau; the 1977 Tour that also helped shape it had a long stage from Oloron-Sainte-Marie to Vitória-Gasteiz but no major early MTF like I have here; after passing through the start of that stage the riders will now be on familiar Pyrenean terrain as they're in the foothills; climbs like Larrau, Pierre-Saint-Martin, Soudet and Marie-Blanque, the westernmost climbs of the region that the Tour typically uses, are to our south (we've long passed those hell-slopes of Iparralde, so beloved of traceurs, such as Bagargui, Burdinkurutxeta, Arnostegi, Errozate and the now-being-discovered-by-the-Vuelta-but-possibly-still-too-narrow-for-Le-Tour Ahusquy) and Gan, Pau and eventually Tarbes will be to our north. After a brief opening salvo of the mountains with a cat.3 climb, the intermediate sprint will take place in the historic city of Lourdes, famous for its religious significance of course, but also very well known to cycling fans of course; it most recently hosted the Grand Boucle in 2011, in a
bizarre mountain stage that enabled Thor Hushovd, in the rainbow jersey, to win after hunting down day-long fugitive Jérémy Roy on the final descent after the latter dropped his break companions on the Aubisque. Its position of importance as a pilgrimage site ensures its prominence as a tourist destination, and its position at the foot of the Pyrenées ensures a position of significance in the Tour, being situated close to traditional Tour climbs like the Aubisque, the Tourmalet and MTFs like Hautacam as well as to as-yet unused climbs like Spandelles. Here, it gives the maillot vert candidates something to get out of the stage, because the purest of sprinters haven't had their chance to shine yet, and the Bouhannis, Sagans and Coquards of this world who will have been favoured thus far will want the opportunity to take something from this type of stage as well as to potentially wrestle the jersey back from a hilly Classics type or GC rider depending on how the race has gone thus far.
After a short uncategorized climb we turn right towards Bagnères-de-Bigorre, and from there it becomes as classic Tour de France Pyrenean stage as you can possibly get: the infernal, blasted, despised Col du Tourmalet. As sure as July comes around every year, so does the Col du Tourmalet. I'm sick of the sight of it, I'm bored of the repetitiousness of it, frustrated by the Tour's over-reliance on the crutches of well-known classic climbs and refusal to use different routes by which to get to its favourite mountaintops... but there does remain one problem: it is by far the hardest climb in the immediate vicinity of today's mountaintop finish, Luz Ardiden. The alternative would be either Aubisque or Spandelles which would leave a fair bit of false flat from Argèles-Gazost to Luz-Saint-Sauveur, and also it is still stage 4 of the race, so though I want to open up gaps with a proper mountain stage, we don't want to make them insurmountable if somebody is peaking for week 3 - they should feel they have the chance to get that time back. However, a bookended Tour route means that riders can't sleepwalk their way to the final week as we often see happening in recent years. Also, going via the Tourmalet means a 220km stage which will have an effect on riders' legs at the end hopefully.
Oh, and I probably ought to mention - the Tourmalet is the ceiling of the race. No climbs higher than this for the rest of the race. Lots of tough climbs, but none at any higher altitude.
So, the Tourmalet. Every cycling fan knows this monolith. You'd have to have been living under a rock and hiding away from the Tour de France to an extent Echoes can only dream of to not be aware of it. It was introduced to Le Tour all the way back in 1910 when it was one of
those climbs that led to Octave Lapize's legendary shout of "vous êtes des assassins!" and the race has gone back to the well repeatedly since. It has been scaled by all of the greats, from the era of Lapize through Nicolas Frantz, to being one of the climbs won by the race's first King of the Mountains, the Spanish featherweight and template for generations of Spanish cyclists Vicente Trueba, to Coppi and Bartali, to the great era of Spanish climbers with Bahamontes and Julio Jiménez, who between them led over the summit for 5 consecutive editions in the mid 60s (only missing 1966, when the climb was not visited), Lucien van Impe, to being a favourite of Lale Cubino, a point-accumulating special for Virenque mk I in the mid-90s - in both the Tour and the Vuelta, which started using it in the era - to its more recent role as a mid-stage points-accumulator for GPM candidates such as Voeckler in 2012 and Majka in 2015, or as an attractive setting for a blossoming bromance as Andy Schleck and Alberto Contador embarrassed us all with a dismal display of mutual affection in 2010, or even worse than that, as a checkpoint in two of the most disgraceful mountain stages ever produced by Christian Prudhomme, the
back to front breakaway stage in 2010 where Garmin strangled the break to prevent Horner and Plaza threatening Hesjedal's 10th place, Armstrong tried to get a final stage win only to launch one of the most pathetic sprints ever seen and be beaten in an incredibly cathartic manner by the highly-reputed Pierrick Fédrigo, and Carlos Barredo attempted a 45km flat solo at the end, and my absolute most despised stage design possibly of all time,
the disgrace of 2009 when Grégory Rast led a bunch of 70+ over the summit, and Óscar Freire and José Joaquín Rojas would have been sprinting for the win if anybody had helped Caisse d'Épargne chase the two leaders who only just clung on.
The eastern side of the climb which we are ascending crests a little over 30km from the line, and with the final 10km of this side averaging a more than considerable 8,9%, it's serious business. Entering this one cold at the start of a Tour could have interesting consequences. After all, it's taken some serious casualties before, such as in 2008 when Valverde and Andy Schleck both suffered (the latter due to hunger knock, the former due to the pace set by Jens Voigt of all people) in the Hautacam stage. After cresting the summit we have the long, hard and technical descent down into Luz-Saint-Sauveur before we take on the multiple hairpins up the Basque Mountain, to the ski resort at Luz-Ardiden.
These dramatic switchbacks were introduced to the Tour in 1985, and the first man to triumph at the top was
Perico Delgado, fresh from his controversial Vuelta win. The Tour has returned seven times since, and the Vuelta has visited twice as well for good measure - there were seven races to the summit in the first ten years after its introduction, with some very prominent victors. These included
the 1990 Tour stage being won by Miguel Indurain, as he transitioned towards the dominant force he became in the coming years, and the
1995 Vuelta stage in a torrential downpour, where the absurdly dominant Laurent Jalabert (who I picked in round 2 of the doping draft for this very race) monitored everybody and then took them to the sword at the finish. The king of Luz Ardiden in this era, however, was the underrated climber Laudelino Cubino, whose exploits I have previously heralded in my Vuelta recaps; he won twice on the Basque Mountain, first in the
1988 Tour and secondly in the
1992 Vuelta, again in horrible weather, and which would prove to be his swansong as a major contender, as the wispy climbers of the 80s started to be phased out in favour of the tanks of the 90s.
Since then, however, its use has been more sparing. The Vuelta hasn't been back since 1995, and the Tour has only been back three times since, with Armstrong's victory in 2003 (now rescinded, of course) the most authoritative, with Mayo, Zubeldia and Ullrich trailing in behind, but the other two are much more beloved. After all, this is the Basque Mountain, the mountaintop finish that the orangemen made their own, with the Basques claiming this as theirs, filling the roads with ikurriñak, so the two victories by Euskaltel-Euskadi's marchers in orange are held in great esteem in the region. In
the 2001 stage Roberto Laiseka, a typically inconsistent but capably excellent climber in the traditional mould, was able to hold off the big guns of the era, while in the more conservatively-raced
2011 stage, the last time the climb was seen in competition, Asturian adopted Basque Samuel Sánchez took advantage of the uncertainty among the major contenders to vault clear for a victory that set up his winning the polka dots that year.
Luz Ardiden is actually rather a borderline case when it comes to HC categorization, being around the same kind of stats as Alpe d'Huez but slightly less steep (just under 7,5% as opposed to just under 8%) and, for a climb of that kind of categorization it is relatively straightforward. It's certainly not as hard a climb as the Col du Tourmalet. However, it IS a mountaintop finish, it IS borderline cat.1/HC and it has had the HC categorization in every edition of the Tour it has been featured in, so I go with that. This stage, even if raced conservatively in line with the
not dissimilar 2011 profile, should result in time gaps and mean that there's something to protect. It should eliminate the pretenders from contention, and it should also mean that the big GC guns have to consider taking the maillot jaune early in the race, which may have an effect when they come to the final week, as they would likely rather not hold on to the jersey and expend too much effort defending it this early on; however, there are no more HC/cat.1 climbs for some time now, so they don't want to pass up the opportunity to take time on their rivals, especially as this is the ONLY Pyrenean stage, and the route is hardly swimming in Alps either (as you can probably guess from the fact there are no climbs higher than the Tourmalet in the race)...
. 
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