Tour to favor aggressive riders
Print Edition
ORGANIZERS have unveiled a route for the 2017 Tour de France featuring many early climbs in a bid to limit the opportunities for strong teams to dominate stages and reward aggressive riders looking to shake up the sport’s greatest spectacle.
Race director Christian Prudhomme peppered the 2017 course with steep climbs, five of them making their first appearance on the Tour and many early in stages, which will start from Duesseldorf on July 1 and go through four countries before ending in Paris on July 23.
“We want to favor the long-range attacks,” Prudhomme told reporters before unveiling the route yesterday. “We want to break the catenaccio on the race,” he added, referring to the conservative tactics top teams are able to impose on flatter stages.
There will be only four summit finishes but attackers will get a chance to make an early impression with two of them coming in the first week, which will end with a gruelling mountain stage in the Jura featuring three daunting out-of-category ascents.
Organizers hope that the top teams will not be able to impose their rule in such a stage having seen Britain’s all-powerful Team Sky in particular often control many stages with meticulously planned and executed group riding.
“Let’s hope that some aggressive top riders will be able to break away in the Col du Grand Colombier (the second of the three big climbs in the stage) and hold on to their lead all the way to Chambery. It will be difficult to control that stage,” said Prudhomme.
Anyone wanting to win will have to find a way to beat Chris Froome, aiming for a third successive victory and fourth in all, and his dominant Team Sky, which has won four of the last five races.
“It could make the race a lot more tactical in the mountains,” Froome said. “It opens the door up for people to be more aggressive.
“It’s very light on time trials, so, for sure, the race is going to be won or lost depending on what happens in the mountains,” said Froome, who named two-time runner-up Colombian Nairo Quintana among his list of expected rivals. “I’m going to have to be as good as I can be in the mountains. That’s going to be my focus.”
“It looks hard,” said Australian rider Richie Porte, who finished fifth for the BMC Racing team this year.
The course, which features two short individual time trials, including the penultimate stage in Marseille, starting and ending at the Stade Velodrome, could favor France’s Romain Bardet, who finished second overall this year. No Frenchman has won the Tour since Bernard Hinault clinched the last of his five titles in 1985.
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