- Sep 20, 2017
- 10,806
- 19,906
- 28,180
The first stage entirely on French soil is one of the flattest of the race. It connects two stage hosts with such short names that Javier Guillén would break out in hives.
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The route
Very little to say about this one. The start is in Dax, a large town on the edge of the enormous Landes forestries mostly known for its thermal spas. From there, the riders head east and then northeast towards the intermediate sprint at Notre-Dame des Cyclistes, the French answer to Madonna del Ghisallo (the chapel, not the climb, of course).
The remainder of the route is a rather uninteresting loop through the Gers department, with a token cat. 4 at Côte de Dému.
Final kilometres
Not the safest of finales. It's all fine until 4.5k to go, but the 1.5k after that are, in my opinion, unsuitable for a sprint in the Tour to an extent that I would understand extending the 3k rule here. The road really narrows here, into this tight turn at about 4.4k from the line.
The next turn has a rather ugly exit onto a slight S-curve.
The road they turn onto here is ridiculously narrow for the finale of a Tour sprint, and lasts for over a kilometre.
At 3.2k to go, they leave this road for one of suitable width.
From here, things become safer, with one key exception: there is a narrowing in the turn onto the motor racing circuit on which they finish, listed as such in the roadbook.
The motor circuit is what you'd expect - lots of curves, but all of them designed for much higher speeds than can be achieved on a race bike on the flat. They enter the circuit at the far end of the main stand (right below the pinkish building in the image below), head through half the circuit counterclockwise, then finish on the 700 metre-long straight in the top right of the picture.
Profile
Map
The route
Very little to say about this one. The start is in Dax, a large town on the edge of the enormous Landes forestries mostly known for its thermal spas. From there, the riders head east and then northeast towards the intermediate sprint at Notre-Dame des Cyclistes, the French answer to Madonna del Ghisallo (the chapel, not the climb, of course).
The remainder of the route is a rather uninteresting loop through the Gers department, with a token cat. 4 at Côte de Dému.
Final kilometres
Not the safest of finales. It's all fine until 4.5k to go, but the 1.5k after that are, in my opinion, unsuitable for a sprint in the Tour to an extent that I would understand extending the 3k rule here. The road really narrows here, into this tight turn at about 4.4k from the line.
The next turn has a rather ugly exit onto a slight S-curve.
The road they turn onto here is ridiculously narrow for the finale of a Tour sprint, and lasts for over a kilometre.
At 3.2k to go, they leave this road for one of suitable width.
From here, things become safer, with one key exception: there is a narrowing in the turn onto the motor racing circuit on which they finish, listed as such in the roadbook.
The motor circuit is what you'd expect - lots of curves, but all of them designed for much higher speeds than can be achieved on a race bike on the flat. They enter the circuit at the far end of the main stand (right below the pinkish building in the image below), head through half the circuit counterclockwise, then finish on the 700 metre-long straight in the top right of the picture.
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