2009 Tour de France route - Page 3

Looks like this route is worse than in 2007 and 2008.

I don't understand the reason they have two stages in Pyrenees with a final climb 43,5km and 70km before the finish respectively. Tourmalet in stage 9 is a waste of time. Petit-Saint Bornard in the Alpes more than 30km before the line doesn't make sense as well. In Armstrong era they had stages like that. I thought the era of such stages are over because we didn't have stages like in the previous two years...

Apart from Ventoux the other two mountaintop finishes aren't very difficult.

However, I am very impressed by the stage to Grand Bornard with 5 hard climbs including the set of two steep monsters near the finish.

It is fair that there is less ITT because of the return of TTT.

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They've always had stages with mountains 50-60km from the end. It's the riders who make the racing interesting not the parcours.

Scrap team radios, and the stages will be back to their former grandeur.

The Alsasce stage will cause problems for a few as well.

I really like the TTT but I think the GC has been a better race without it.
It's good that they have limited it to 38km this time so that should at least keep time gaps a lot smaller.

Bump.
(because of Flyer)

Not in this case. Mountain stages with the last col 50-60km from the end are usually ****. Stages from the Pyrenees that finish in Pau are almost always rubbish with some break of journeymen drudging along. I want to see the main contenders smash the **** out of one another in a mad dash for the finish line.

The only half interesting instance I can think of where the last climb was 50-60kms from the finish was the stage into Pamplona in 1996, but they climbed a stack of cols early and the stage was ridiculously long IIRC (Dufaux won it)

I remember that stage in 1996 : the last 50 kms were panflat after a fearsome
amount of climbing in the earlier part of the stage.
Dufaux won that stage from Bjarne Riis in a sprint finish!

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.."But finally the last thing I’ll say to the people who don’t believe in cycling, the cynics and the sceptics. I'm sorry for you. I’m sorry that you can’t dream big. [I]I'm sorry you don't believe in miracles. You should believe in these athletes, and you should believe in these people. I'll be a fan of the Tour de France for as long as I live. And there are no secrets - this is a hard sporting event and hard work wins it" - Armstrong 2005 TDF
morelike hypocrisy.

Do you think having the big climbs so far from the finish is a move intended to aid the breakaways? These are the stages that tend to see breaks staying away as the big guns just shadow each other over the climbs. Even though people are saying the route is perfect for Contador I get the feeling it has in some way been designed to make it harder for Astana to control.

That's an interesting view, Rolf.

The modern GT contenders tend to shadow each other on the climbs in recent years.
Unless you have an exception like Merckx who would go out to win the stage regardless of the parcours is flat, steep etc.

Would the ASO design stages just to negate one team???

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.."But finally the last thing I’ll say to the people who don’t believe in cycling, the cynics and the sceptics. I'm sorry for you. I’m sorry that you can’t dream big. [I]I'm sorry you don't believe in miracles. You should believe in these athletes, and you should believe in these people. I'll be a fan of the Tour de France for as long as I live. And there are no secrets - this is a hard sporting event and hard work wins it" - Armstrong 2005 TDF
morelike hypocrisy.

They've thrown in a team time trial - perfect on paper for Astana - but they've kept it short at 38km. There are no time bonuses once again - let's not forget that Contador won the Vuelta with bonuses. Many of the mountain stages are front loaded, which at least mentally favours the lesser climbers, the breakaway enthusiasts and encourages teams to attack Astana/CSC.

Yeah, Neil Stephens nearly got over the last climb with the big hitters on that stage.

Well, seems to me like this route is being massively over hyped already. As a committed cynic I'll be more in line with Guncha's view of this.

The stages in the pyrenee's are a pile of crap, two of them won't really do anything to the top 20 and since the stage to Arcalis only has one (small) climb before the moutain top finish time differences will be small as the climb isn't particularly selective.

Then we settle into a long series of transitional stages, great for breakaways, no good for the spectacle of the whole thing unless the teams decide to throw the standard rulebook out the window (like they tend to do in the Giro) but since this is Le Tour that won't happen.

Finally we hit the alps and the first stage to Verbier suffers from not having any hard climbs before the finishing one and since the climb to Verbier is once again not that hard no big time differences will be seen here (for an idea of what it's like look at last years TdS stage to Verbier).

Then there's the stage with the two Bernards in it, both of which are great climbs but with such a long down hill afterwards, well, the mountains are great to look at even if the racing only elimantes a couple of the top 15 contenders.

Stage 17 looks interesting to me, lots of cat 2 and cat 1 climbs, should encourage some attacking at least, this to me looks like the most interesting stage. Then we have ITT (yawn) transition stage (yawn) and finally Ventoux which is always a great climb to watch but I might have fallen into a coma by this point.

Only hope for the route is if some of the transitional stages do what the Giro has done over the past few years and put short sharp finishing climbs at the end to make sure the teams have to properly race the last 40k rather than leave it up to the sprinters to finish things off. And hopefully the intermediate stages will be designed to encourage lots of breakaways but I suspect not.

So I reckon the Giro will be the most exciting race to watch next year, as it always has the best route.

I've been saying that **** for years.

Good points. I would have wanted harder mountain stages too. Is it just my memory failing on me or were the mountain stages harder in the "old days" (beginning of this decade)?

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i'm throwing my lot in with those that would like to see the removal of team radios. allow for a grand mistake or a leader that allows himself to get isolated or chasing the wrong break. get the decision makers back on the bicycle and out of the team car.

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an interesting route, would have liked to have had a mountain tt or the bourg st marice stage to have gone to les arcs would have improved it a huge amount. i am a bit disapointed in the lack of difficult mountain finishes, verbier and arcalis dont look to hard at all. but maybe the lack of difficult finishes will encorage more attacking thou?
only really two mountain stages where there is a chance of big time gaps appearing? ventoux and le grand bornard?