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Tour de France 2021 route rumors

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One more thing I want to see besides those already mentioned are stages with mountains from the beginning, where break can form or some GC contenders who lost time can attack Contador-style. I just can't stand those 100km of flat roads on a queen stage before Madeline or in Grand Colombiere stage.
 
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Granon would definitely be a hard HC finish. However, the climb has quite a legendary status, because
  • it only appears once in the tour
  • in a time that big mountain stages, still made big differences
  • the kind of steepness was still rarely seen in pro-cycling at that moment, nowadays I would say it's still a monster, but not extraordinary anymore compared to what features in pro cycling in terms of steepness.

So, considering racing style in recent tours, I'm not sure (a stage with) Granon can fullfill the expectations as the legendary monster climb
 
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Oh, that doesn't matter at all, though. You know these people take one glance on the route beforehand, see only one stage above 200 kms and just one ITT, decide it's crap and then attribute any actual excitement to chance, thus making it insignificant, because we can't have the prevailing theories regarding course design challenged by things so pedestrian as real, non-virtual, non-simulated racing.

This.

The route and the race are related, but at the same time they are totally different entities.

I rated the 2020 Tour (race) a 7. I would probably rate the route a 5.

It is very hard for me to give any route that has less than 50 kms of flattish ITTing a high rating, and this one only had 30. To make matters worse, immediately after those 30 kms followed yet another ascent of PDBF.

Yet one of the things that was actually the worst about the parcours, turned out to be one of the best things about the race. Stage 20 was a 10/10, or at least a 9. As far as the racing aspect goes. But I would still rate it pretty low for stage design.

Or how about this almost now mythical stage 6? It was a nice idea to put this new climb into the Tour, and to maybe alter the GC a little in week one. ASO even gave the riders likely easier days on stages 5 and 7, making action on stage 6 somewhat likely. But as it turned out, as far as the racing aspect goes, it was a 0/10, or maybe a 1 (for Astana's past and present).

I was very gullible about Red Rick's 8 rating, and part of that was for his reference to new climbs. I think this is something that the Tour has done pretty well in recent times. New climbs, and more potentially decisive mountain stages outside of the Alps and Pyrenees. Maybe it was just Armstrong's dominance clouding my view, but I recall those Tours as basically 5 high mountain stages, 2 or 3 time trials, 1 other mildly interesting GC stage if we were lucky, with the rest of stages being much ado about nothing.

We never used to see stages like 13 and 15 in previous eras of the Tour. We only ever saw them in the two main mountain regions.

But of course the Tour can do better. They can give us longer multi mountain stages. Likes stages 18 and 20 of this years Giro.

But for next year, it seems that the majority will be happy with a long flat ITT, a MTF on Granon, and if the Pyrenees are last, I reckon that you can't do too much better than the first three Pyrenean stages of the 2003 edition. In the same order. Some people are calling for AX3 and Luz Ardiden anyway.
 
This.


I was very gullible about Red Rick's 8 rating, and part of that was for his reference to new climbs. I think this is something that the Tour has done pretty well in recent times. New climbs, and more potentially decisive mountain stages outside of the Alps and Pyrenees. Maybe it was just Armstrong's dominance clouding my view, but I recall those Tours as basically 5 high mountain stages, 2 or 3 time trials, 1 other mildly interesting GC stage if we were lucky, with the rest of stages being much ado about nothing.

We never used to see stages like 13 and 15 in previous eras of the Tour. We only ever saw them in the two main mountain regions.


Tour designs for most tours in the Amstrong era were quite poor. A prologue, 2 decent long time-trials, team time trial, 2 stages in the Pyrenees, 3 in the Alps (or the other way around), and one more or less tricky stage in one of the other mountain ranges. Little originality in the stage designs for the mountain stages, always finishing in big ski-resords on big roads, and of course the stages finishing in Pau. Not even talking about the 9 flat stages in a row to start the tour with. And to make it worse, I don't think (or remember) there were even that many crosswind stages on all those flat stages.

The first Amstrong tours were in terms of climbing challenges rather light, as a response on 1998 and Festina. The idea somehow was, it's too dificult, so they are doping (strange conclusion, but that's not a discussion for here). We have to make it easier, extra restday and less mountains.
 
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Nah Brokeback Mountain is actually controllable but the difference is simply that in 2013 and 2015 Quintana was just flying harder than Froome at that stage in the race.

2018 it came after Madeleine and CdF and it was a dud.
It wasn’t bad. Kruijswijk went with about 75 km left and just about pulled it off. It was a pretty remarkable ride for a guy finishing in the Top 5. There were attacks on the Alpe and only 5 GC were left at the front when they sprinted it out.
 
If they really plan on doing that, it's clear who they are trying to convince to ride the Tour.
He's not going to ride the Tour as his first GT going for glory immediately, especially not considering the Olympics are probably going ahead and he's stated multiple times they come first, because the course suits him and it's only once every 4 years. The Olympic RR was scheduled 25th of July 2020 initially, so if they stick to a similar schedule, there is no way both can be combined. It's strange they would actually do it with him in mind.
 
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I pointed at La Rabassa because it's the only one other than Coll d'Ordino that's usable as a pass that isn't mentioned in ice&fire's post, and if you're climbing to Arcalis after the tough side of Beixalis you couldn't climb Ordino. Arinsal would be like Els Cortals d'Encamp, have to be an MTF but would be a reasonable option.

Both would be better than Arcalis, mind. Els Cortals is the steepest of the main MTFs in Andorra, while Arinsal has been unused for many years so would have an element of unfamiliarity that Arcalis and Pal wouldn't, so riders wouldn't be able to draw on racing experience as to where the key places to make moves are. Also Arinsal is part of the Vallnord station so the same people would be paying whether they finish at Pal, Arcalis or Arinsal, in which case I'd think Arinsal would be a win-win, get the name of that station out there for publicity and provide a less well-trodden climb for the race.
 
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