Rate the 2018 Tour de France route

[Max Rockatansky]

1 Noirmoutier-en-l'Île › Fontenay-le-Comte 189 km
2 Mouilleron-Saint-Germain › La Roche-sur-Yon 183 km
3 Cholet › Cholet CLM par équipes - 35 km
4 La Baule › Sarzeau 192 km
5 Lorient › Quimper 203 km
6 Brest › Mûr-de-Bretagne 181 km
7 Fougères › Chartres 231 km
8 Dreux › Amiens 181 km
9 Arras › Roubaix 154 km

Restday and Transfer to Aix-les-Bains

10 Annecy › Le Grand Bornand 159 km
11 Albertville › La Rosière-Montvalezan 108 km
12 Bourg-Saint-Maurice › L'Alpe d’Huez 175 km
13 Bourg d’Oisans › Valence 169 km
14 Saint-Paul-Trois-Châteaux › Mende 187 km
15 Millau › Carcassonne 181 km

Restday Carcassonne

16 Carcassonne › Bagnères-de-Luchon 218 km
17 Bagnères-de-Luchon › St-Lary-Soulan - Col du Portet 65 km
18 Trie-sur-Baise › Pau 172 km
19 Lourdes › Laruns 200 km
20 Saint-Pée-sur-Nivelle › Espelette ITT 31 km
21 Houilles › Paris Champs-Elysées 115 km

 

[Red Rick]

Incredibly mixed feelings. A few things are really good, while other things are atrocious. It really takes some thinking through

 

[tdf2018]

In what scale?

 

[Alexandre B.]

+Real variety of expression : plains, coasts, TTT, ITT, hills, cobbles, high gradients, descent finishes after hard climbs, MTFs.
+Mountain stages are real mountain stages, no Unipuerto on sight.
+More mid-mountain stages, they're always welcome.
+Alpe d'Huez used before week 3, and on a monster stage.
+Cobbles.
+An introduction to gravel roads.

-I don't like TTT.
-I would have made the Pau stage a little bit harder for the Kittels of this world.
-The weakest Bastille Day stage since the dawn of times.

8/10

 

[Red Rick]

Ok. 4 it is.

Route has a lot of distraction for how garbage it is.

 

[capuldemetal]

give it an 8.looks quite fun.

 

[Pricey_sky]

Quite a varied route and I like that they've mixed it up. A solid 8.

 

[18-Valve. (pithy)]

Re:

+Real variety of expression : plains, coasts, TTT, ITT, hills, cobbles, high gradients, descent finishes after hard climbs, MTFs.
+Mountain stages are real mountain stages, no Unipuerto on sight.
+More mid-mountain stages, they're always welcome.
+Alpe d'Huez used before week 3, and on a monster stage.
+Cobbles.
+An introduction to gravel roads.

-I don't like TTT.
-I would have made the Pau stage a little bit harder for the Kittels of this world.
-The weakest Bastille Day stage since the dawn of times.

8/10

I mostly agree, except I love the TTT and dislike the Luchon stage. It would have been better as a single brutal-ish climb (Bales) + descent finish, IMO. Portillon (E) is weak. Menté (E) only okay. Not a potential GC stage, IMO.

 

[telencefalus]

10 , i like the tt , and the climbs the 65 km stage portet

 

[hrotha]

Voted 4, regretting it already.

With so few ITT kilometers, it simply can't get a pass. That alone makes it completely unbalanced. To make things worse, it's a very hilly ITT on the second-to-last day, which will minimize its impact on the racing.

The cobbles should be interesting (although, again, I'm not sure how selective they'll actually be), but the stage is too short. That's a major problem with this route: having a few short stages or one very short stage is fine, but this is ridiculous. The endurance factor is almost negated. There's only one longish mountain stage and it's not a particularly difficult one.

It's more of the same: it favours mediocre racing by mediocre riders, instead of allowing proper all-rounders with extreme endurance and recovery to shine.

 

[May0maniac]

Re:

Incredibly mixed feelings. A few things are really good, while other things are atrocious. It really takes some thinking through

Yes, some things look pretty good, other really bad, I've got mixed feelings when it comes to this route.

 

[johnymax]

Good route. More than half stages are GC relevant which is a lot for the Tour.

Edit: Of course I'd also like more ITT km, but this is in line with what you'd expect from the Tour lately so I didn't get my hopes up.

 

[Chrispol]

Re:

Voted 4, regretting it already.

With so few ITT kilometers, it simply can't get a pass. That alone makes it completely unbalanced. To make things worse, it's a very hilly ITT on the second-to-last day, which will minimize its impact on the racing.

The cobbles should be interesting (although, again, I'm not sure how selective they'll actually be), but the stage is too short. That's a major problem with this route: having a few short stages or one very short stage is fine, but this is ridiculous. The endurance factor is almost negated. There's only one longish mountain stage and it's not a particularly difficult one.

It's more of the same: it favours mediocre racing by mediocre riders, instead of allowing proper all-rounders with extreme endurance and recovery to shine.

Yes only 4700m D+, easy one.

Bagnères-de-Luchon stage is more of a medium mountain stage. Aubisque is 200km, wich is pretty good.

The Alpe d'Huez stage is 5000m D+ too.

A good route I give it a 7. By far the best route of the last 10 years I'd say.

 

[Dekker_Tifosi]

Too few TT kilometers otherwise ok, 7/10

 

[Gigs_98]

So are there gravel roads in the first week or did that rumour end up being wrong?

 

[hrotha]

Re: Re:

Yes only 4700m D+, easy one.

200 km is not "long" in my book. I was referring to the Bagnères-de-Luchon stage.

 

[Singer01]

Echo the concern re the lack of TT km. Which is a massive shame because with a long flat 45km TT in week 1 it would be a great route.

 

[Maaaaaaaarten]

Meh gave it 6/10, probably too high.

+ Using new and exciting climbs
+ Having several difficult multi mountain stages
+ Some all round variety with Quimper, Roubaix and medium mountain stages

- Ridiculous short length of mountain stages
- Ridiculous lack of TT kilometers, with the only ITT being super hilly to boot.

Unless the right riders lose a bunch of time in the first week, I'm afraid it will be pretty boring.

 

[Bolder]

Riders will make the race. 8-man teams will dictate a change in strategy for some. One fewer climber? One fewer rouleur?

Can't wait for Stage 12. A proper mountain stage coming after a shorter but barely less hard one should be very interesting. Anyone who falters on Stage 11 would be forced to try something I think.

As to whether this favors anyone, I don't think so. I would have preferred a flat ITT in there -- so maybe it's a nod to Bardet and the other flyweights who can't be bothered to train for one.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say Landa will podium. Not positive Froome has another win in him.

 

[Chrispol]

Re: Re:

Yes only 4700m D+, easy one.

200 km is not "long" in my book. I was referring to the Bagnères-de-Luchon stage.

200km is long. Not extremely long, but quite long.

Almost 6h on the bike, this is your long mountain stage.

Bagnères-de-Luchon isn't a real moutain stage.

 

[Red Rick]

Ok, I'm done thinking it through.

Few things to consider before looking at the route are the riders already confirmed to ride it or not, the change to 8 man teams, transfers of this year, and ofcourse recent performances by the main contenders.

- With 8 man teams next year, racing is supposed to be more open. There's fewer riders to give shelter to the peloton, so the peloton as a whole should fatigue faster. This seems largely negated by the imporant stages being way too short in general
- With Dumoulin winning the Giro and Froome not dominating the climbs this year, the range of possible contenders seemed quite wide before the route came out
- Most important transfers are Nieve and especially Landa leaving Sky, and Castroviejo leaving Movistar imo, leaving the primary pure climbers with weak teams for the TTT and the first week.


So, the better rouleurs among the GC contenders mostly have the best teams for the first week, and they're likely gonna be minutes ahead with the final ITT still up their sleeve.

All the rest will have to make up minutes. Team Sky will once again be the best team by far and they can negate any really long range attack making them completely suicidal except for on the Tourmalet. In fact, the most important thing for action in the mountains is the amount of Sky riders that crash out in the first week.

Now for the mountain stages.

Le Grand Bornand is a good stage. Glières is a nice find, but irrelevant. Gonna be all about Romme-Colombiére and no team will be able to blow up the race enough to derail Sky

La Rosière. Under 110km. Finishing climb of under 6%. Ha. Haha. Hahahaha

Alpe d'Huez. Decent stage. All action on the Alpe. If it's actually any good depends on which riders have teammates in the breakaway, how good the climbers are and how good team Sky is. Sky controlled the Angliru, they can control Alpe d'Huez easily unless they're up against significantly better climbers

Bagnere de Luchon. Meh.

Portet. The ASO guide on how to not use short mountain stages. All about the MTF. Again

Pau. Oh wait, it's not a mountain stage. ***

Laruns. Aubisque from that side as the final climb really ruins it, unless the race utterly explodes on the Tourmalet. Very unlikely to happen.


Overall, incredibly favourable for strong teams. Not good.

I rate this a very good Tour de l'Avenir

 

[Netserk]

Better than: '09, '12, '15 & '17, I think. So for a modern Tour, I guess it'll end up around 4-5.

Is it confirmed that there are no ribon?

 

[Maaaaaaaarten]

Re:

La Rosière. Under 110km. Finishing climb of under 6%. Ha. Haha. Hahahaha

The Rosière stage actually would have some potential if it were placed at a better moment in the route. Col du Pré and Signal de Bisanne are proper difficult climbs and steep as well for TDF standards. This would have been a well designed short explosive mountain stage to encourage far out attacks, if it weren't for the fact it's only the second mountain stage and is followed by a day with three HC climbs, so nobody will be willing to risk anything.

 

[Sestriere]

I'll start with the positives:
+ TTT is good, like watching them. But I also see the point of those who don't like seeing them in GTs. It could make the first week slightly less nervous, though.
+ The cobbled stage is very good. Sizeable amount of cobbles, could be brilliant in rainy conditions.
+ First week overall looks pretty tricky, classics-like.
+Promising Alps, with a good variety of stage length and uphill/downhill finishes.
+ Alpe d'Huez this early is great, don't think they'll race this conservatively.
+ Looks like two neat hilly transitional stage in the Massif Central, finally!
+ Really curious about the 65 km stage.
+ In general some interesting, unknown/rarely used climbs

Negatives:
- First week looks still extremely crash prone, despite the TTT
- Mur de Bretagne kind of uninspiring at this point
- BURN that Bastille-stage!
- The dirt road atop the Plateau des Glières looks a bit too gimmicky.
- The stage to La Rosière would be awesome as last mountain stage. But right before the Queen stage it will be rather wasted I'm afraid. The last climb is too shallow and nobody's gonna risk it all at this point. It screams ambush just a bit too much.
- The ITT is too short for my taste (better around 50 km)

Suggestions for improvements:
- I would have been interested in a short ITT (~ 6-10 km) the morning before the Portet-stage, that could have made it even better
- Leave the Croix de Fer aside and go directly to the Glandon from La Chambre.
- Stages tend to be too short, one of the mountain stages should have been really long, like 7.5 hours or something.


Overall I think it's a good route, with some very interesting parts, but also some major flaws.

7/10

 

[Red Rick]

Re: Re:

La Rosière. Under 110km. Finishing climb of under 6%. Ha. Haha. Hahahaha

The Rosière stage actually would have some potential if it were placed at a better moment in the route. Col du Pré and Signal de Bisanne are proper difficult climbs and steep as well for TDF standards. This would have been a well designed short explosive mountain stage to encourage far out attacks, if it weren't for the fact it's only the second mountain stage and is followed by a day with three HC climbs, so nobody will be willing to risk anything.

The climb itself is a bit too long for that, it's a bit too hard relative to the previous climb. It works better when you have Glandon-Toussuire or something like that.