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The Tour de France route was unveiled on Thursday, October 27, in Paris. On the menu: three days in the Basque Country and a pass through the five main mountain ranges of France, with the return of the Puy de Dôme.
A great start in the Basque Country, the five French massifs, 30 climbs and the return of a mythical mountain on the Tour de France route. Mountain lovers received a wink on Thursday when the route of the ‘Grande boucle’ was revealed.
35 years after its last appearance, the Puy de Dôme reappears among other ancient and modern giants, during a 2023 Tour de France that will be a great place for climbers.
Five mountain ranges of France. A record 30 passes. Almost 56,000 meters of positive elevation gain. Four arrivals at the summit. And a unique 22 km time trial that includes a mythical steep climb: we will have to go light next July!
The 25 departure from abroad
Presented in Paris, the 2023 route takes on a new dimension. This is not always a guarantee of show. But at least it makes you salivate during the eight months remaining before the big start on July 1 in Bilbao, the second opening from Spain and the 25th from abroad in the more than 100-year history of the event.
The route of the 110th edition resembles an arrow that crosses France diagonally, from the southwest to the center-east, from the Basque Country to Alsace, leaving out entire areas of the country, at the risk of offending cycling lands such as Brittany, the North and the South of the Mediterranean.
But he did not forget any of the mountainous areas, successively crossing the Pyrenees, the Massif Central, the Jura, the Alps and the Vosges, where a stage with six climbs will keep the suspense going until the day before the arrival on the Champs-Élysées on the 23rd. of July.
The Puy de Dôme, a myth long absent
If we must remember a great symbolic event, it will be that of July 9, when the Tour de France returns to the fearsome slopes of the Puy de Dome35 years after his last step and 59 years after the legendary duel between Jacques Anquetil and Raymond Poulidor.
🔎 Stage 9 / Stage 9 #PTO2023
⛰ Puy de Dome
📈 13.3km, 7.7%💪 After 35 years, the Puy de Dôme is back!
💪 35 years after the last arrived, the Tour de France bursts into Puy de Dôme! pic.twitter.com/ihtwaeZLCe
— Tour de France™ (@LeTour) October 27, 2022
The Auvergne volcano, which has celebrated champions such as Coppi, Bahamontes, Ocaña or van Impe, is conducive to legend and the peloton could erupt on this day, especially in the last four kilometers at an average speed of almost 12% and without public, given the narrowness of the place.
But there are plenty of other places to shake up the 2023 Tour. Riders will climb myths like the Tourmaletwhile the Pyrenees they are on the menu from stage 5, between Pau and Laruns, with the ports of Soudet and Marie Blanque.
The sprinters, who will be able to console themselves on the stages that lead to Bayonne, Bordeaux, the Nogaro racecourse or Limoges, will also curse the most recent summits, which will become great classics.
First of all, the infernal Col de la Loze with its steps of more than 20%, discovered in 2020, and which will be run this year just before the plunge in Courchevel for the queen stage.
But also the Grand Colombierwhere the arrival will take place on July 14, for the second time in history, two years after the terrible failure of Egan Bernal.
All in all, the 2023 Tour, whose last stage will start from the Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines velodrome, seems more promising than ever for a champion who likes climbing, and this from the first stage with a loop around Bilbao that offers a positive drop of 3,300 m.
The only time trial on the programme, between Passy and Combloux, is set five days before the finish. It is only 22km long – the lowest total distance in history after 13km in 2015 – and includes the Domancy climb (2.5km at 9.4%), where Bernard Hinault crushed the competition in a run to become world champion in 1980.
If Belgian cyclist Remco Evenepoel, who is very comfortable in time trials, had to be convinced to wait until 2024 to make his Tour de France debut, the organizers would not have done otherwise!
With other hard climbs in the Alps (Ramaz, Joux Plane, Forclaz, Croix Fry, Le Bettex), the 2023 track seems, at this point, to prepare the ground for a repeat of the duel between Jonas Vingegaard, the outgoing winner, and Tadej Pogacar, winner in 2020 and 2021, who dreams of taking revenge next summer.
with AFP
This article was adapted from its French original
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