Start: Leeds, UK, on 5 July
Finish: Paris, France, on 27 July
Total distance: 3656 km (2272 miles)
Longest stage: 237 km (147 miles)
Highest point:
Col d’lzoard: 2360 m (7742 ft)
Mountain stages: 6
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Start: Leeds, UK, on 5 July |
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Total distance: 3656 km (2272 miles) |
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Highest point: |
You could be forgiven for thinking, after all the excitement of the 100th edition of the Tour de France in 2013 — its Grand Départ in Corsica, climbs of both Alpe d’Huez and Mont Ventoux, and a stunning dusk finish on the Champs-Elysées in Paris — that the Tour might be happy to stay out of the limelight and revert to a more traditional, almost less impressive route for 2014.
But you’d be wrong. A Grand Départ in Yorkshire — the furthest north the race has ever started — takes the Tour to the heartland of British cycling, and provides yet another exciting and original start to the race. There’s also a return to London, which hosted the start of the 2007 Tour, for the finish of stage three, before a return to France that takes in the cobbles of northern France, the tough climbs of the Alps and the Pyrenees and a grand finale in Paris.
Having featured in the 100th edition, neither the Ventoux nor Alpe d’Huez appear in 2014; the Tour’s two most iconic climbs have been given a year off. But there are plenty of celebrated mountains on the menu to whet the appetite nevertheless, and the Col d’Izoard, Pla d’Adet, the Col du Tourmalet and Hautacam all feature.
Assuming good health and an injury-free build-up, defending champion Chris Froome is likely to start as the favourite, while Sky team-mate — and 2012 champion — Bradley Wiggins, who missed the 2013 edition, should be an extremely able co-captain. Earlier in the 2014 season, Nairo Quintana — runner-up in 2013 — wasn’t certain to start in Yorkshire, potentially targeting victory at the Tour of Italy and the Tour of Spain instead. But regardless of whether the Colombian lines up to challenge Team Sky’s Tour dominance, Froome et al will face stiff competition from the likes of Spain’s Alberto Contador and Luxembourg’s Schleck brothers, who are both hoping for a return to form — Frank from a year ban for a positive test for the diuretic drug xipamide and Andy from the long-term effects of a pelvis fracture sustained in 2012. If all the potential contenders do make it to the start line in Leeds on July 5th, the 2014 Tour has all the makings of a classic race.
2014 sees the Tour return to its most well used climb, the Col du Tourmalet. Thomas Voeckler shows the pain required to be first over the summit when it was last climbed in 2012
Stages 1 to 3
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Stage: 1 |
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Classification: Flat |
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Stage: 2 |
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Classification: Hilly |
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Stage: 3 |
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Classification: Flat |
The 2014 Tour’s opening stage, between Leeds and Harrogate, virtually invites home hero Mark Cavendish to win the race’s first yellow jersey, finishing as it does in the town where his mother lives; whoever wins this flat first stage will take it. But when he had that opportunity in 2013, on a similar opening stage in Corsica, Cavendish was thwarted by German fast-man Marcel Kittel, who went on to win another three stages, to Cavendish’s eventual two.
Whoever wears the maillot jaune on the second stage from York to Sheffield will be hard-pressed to defend it on a much lumpier affair that threatens to shake up the general classification once more. The principal difficulty along the way is the climb of Holme Moss, in the Pennines, which will be familiar to many thanks to multiple appearances on the route of the Tour of Britain over the years. The sprinters’ teams will have their work cut out to try to keep things in check, and the other teams will all be hoping to get a man into whichever breakaway eventually sticks.
The race then leaves Yorkshire behind with a road transfer south to Cambridge for the start of the third and final stage on British shores. The day’s route heads down through Essex and into central London, where a spectacular sprint finish on The Mall is on the cards. Many of those among what will be huge crowds hoping for a Cavendish win will remember the 2007 Tour having started here when a prologue time trial was won by Swiss powerhouse Fabian Cancellara, who rolled out from The Mall again the next day in yellow en route to Canterbury, where Australian sprinter Robbie McEwen took the stage victory.
But in 2014, the London stage finish signals the end of the race’s time in the UK, and a hop across the Channel to the coastal resort of Le Touquet for the start of stage four puts the ‘France’ back into ‘Tour de France’.
After two days in the wilds of the Yorkshire Dales and the Peak District, stage 3 sets off from the beautiful university city of Cambridge
Stages 4 to 10
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Stage: 4 |
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Classification: Hilly |
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Stage: 5 |
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Classification: Flat |
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Stage: 6 |
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Classification: Flat |
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Stage: 7 |
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Classification: Flat |
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Stage: 8 |
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Classification: Hilly |
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Stage: 9 |
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Classification: Hilly |
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Stage: 10 |
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Classification: Mountains |
Once back on French soil, it’s not long before the race heads off piste again — this time into Belgium. The Ypres start to stage five commemorates 100 years since the start of the First World War, when the Flemish town was of key strategic importance. What’s likely to be an emotional start to the day’s stage will give way to a time of difficulty of a different kind as the peloton take on the cobblestones that only just about pave many of the roads of northern France, and will be familiar to both riders and fans from the route of the Paris-Roubaix one-day race. The last time the Tour came through this part of the world, and across these cobbles, was in 2010, when crashes galore brought down a number of big names, and put paid to overall contender Frank Schleck’s ambitions when he had to retire from stage three with a broken collarbone. They’ll all be trying to avoid such a fate this time in the hopes of heading into the Vosges mountains on stage eight in the best condition possible.
The mountain range in north-east France is not a patch on the upcoming Alps or Pyrenees, but the ballons — meaning ball, or balloon, thanks to the climbs’ rounded, rather than peaked, summits — come thick and fast around here for three stages, culminating with the tough finish at La Planche des Belles Filles on stage 10. It was here on the seventh stage of the 2012 Tour that Chris Froome showed 2011 champion Cadel Evans a clean pair of heels to take the stage win, while Bradley Wiggins took third, and with it the yellow jersey, which he then held on to all the way to Paris. The climb should again show who the real favourites are for the 2014 title.
Jens Voigt checks on his injured team-mate Frank Schleck after a crash during stage 3 of the 2010 Tour de France
Stages 11 to 15
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Stage: 11 |
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Classification: Flat |
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Stage: 12 |
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Classification: Hilly |
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Stage: 13 |
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Classification: Mountains |
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Stage: 14 |
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Classification: Mountains |
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Stage: 15 |
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Classification: Flat |
Following a rest day in Besançon, the riders head south out of the city on stage 11, destination Oyonnax — nestled in a valley in the shadow of the Jura mountains, just north of the Alps. A tough first week can be ticked off the list, and the sprinters get their chance to come to the fore once more. Expect a bunch gallop in Oyonnax, and possibly again on the next day’s lumpier stage from Bourg-en-Bresse to Saint-Etienne, although no doubt a group of chancers will hope to make a break stick before the start of the Alps proper.
Stage 13 heralds the first day in the high mountains, although it’s really only on the final climb up to the finish at the ski station of Chamrousse that the riders will be fully tested. If La Planche des Belles Filles on stage 10 was a dress rehearsal to indicate how the top riders were feeling, Chamrousse will be the real deal, and anyone failing to find their climbing legs can probably kiss a podium place in Paris good-bye. The 18-km (11-mile) climb has been used only once before in the Tour, and that was for an individual time-trial stage in 2001. That 32-km (19-mile) stage from Grenoble was won by Lance Armstrong, who beat Germany’s Jan Ullrich by exactly a minute. The result was later nullified after Armstrong’s admission in 2013 that he had cheated to win all seven of ‘his’ Tours.
Stage 14 the following day promises to be nothing short of spectacular as the riders take on two legendary climbs in the form of the Col du Lauteret and the Col d’Izoard, while the day ends with another summit finish at another ski resort — this time the resort of Risoul, which appears on the Tour route for the first time.
Climbers and sprinters alike will be pleased to see the flat, but long, run between Tallard and Nîmes for stage 15. The race’s second and final rest day follows it.
Winner of three consecutive Tours in the 50s, France’s Louison Bobet moves clear of Ferdi Kübler on the Col d’Izoard, en route to his second victory in 1954
Stages 16 to 21
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Stage: 16 |
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Classification: Mountains |
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Stage: 17 |
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Classification: Mountains |
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Stage: 18 |
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Classification: Mountains |
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Stage: 19 |
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Classification: Flat |
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Stage: 20 |
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Classification: Individual time trial |
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Stage: 21 |
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Classification: Flat |
For those still left in the race, waking up in Carcassonne for the start of the third and final week will be tough on both body and mind — especially as the toughest stages are yet to come.
Stage 16 is a relatively gentle introduction to the Pyrenees, taking the riders over the Col de Portet d’Aspet and the Port de Balès before a long descent to the finish in the spa town of Bagnères-de-Luchon. But stage 17 and 18 are hard to split in terms of toughness; both could easily lay claim to the title of the 2014 Tour’s ‘queen stage’.
The 17th stage between Saint-Gaudens and the town of Saint-Lary-Soulon, towered over by the climb of Pla d’Adet, features four Pyrenean climbs of such similar heights and gradients — and toughness — that the stage profile resembles more a Stegosaurus’s back than the usual ‘shark’s teeth’ cliché.
But whoever empties the tank to win at Pla d’Adet will need to recharge their batteries quickly. Stage 18 features the veritably monstrous Col du Tourmalet — a mountain beaten only by Mont Ventoux and Alpe d’Huez in order of the Tour’s most iconic climbs, and 2014 will be its 79th appearance in the race, making it the race’s most-used mountain, having first featured in 1910.
Before Paris, there’s one more chance for the sprinters’ teams to bag a win on the 19th stage between Maubourguet Pays du Val d’Adour and Bergerac, and then comes the race’s one and only time trial: a 54-km (34-mile) individual race against the clock that will decide the race if things are still close between the leaders. The race winner will be all but crowned that night in Périgueux in the Dordogne. The riders will then take a flight to Evry, just south of Paris, to start the final processional stage towards the Champs-Elysées. Only once they arrive on the capital’s famous cobblestones will the blue touch paper be lit; this is the unofficial sprinters’ world championships.
The peloton on the Champs Élysées, with the Arc de Triomphe in the background, during the final stage of the 2010 Tour
