Three summit finishes and three individual time trials, the 2012 Tour de France will favour the all rounder.
Unveiled this morning in Paris, next year’s Tour will kick off on the 30 June with a 6.1 km prologue in Liège in Belgium. Let’s take a look at the Tour highlights:
Three mountain top finishes and three individual time trials, one of which will take place the day before the Champs Elysées finish.
Christian Prudhomme, the director of the Tour de France has made sure there’ll be plenty of classic days. Stage 7 in the Vosges ascends to the ski centre of Planche des Belles Filles (1,148m) with a testing final climb of 5.5km at over nine percent. Stage 10 tackles the legendary climbs of the Col del la Madeleine and the Col de la Croix de Fer before a climb to the resort of Les Sybelles at 1,700m. The third finish in the clouds is a race to the the ski town of Peyragudes in the Pyrenees, the day after a brutal stage taking in the Aubisque, Tourmalet, Aspin and Peyresourde.
There’ll be a number of firsts, but Prudhomme is sure they’ll be popular additions. Although there’ll be fewer summit finishes than past years, there’ll be more testing climbs and some vicious gradients, which will no doubt kick off some entertaining attacks. The additional time trials also give riders who fail to keep with the pace on the big summit days the opportunity to make back any lost time against the clock.
So, it could be a Tour that suits a British all-rounder like Bradley Wiggins or Chris Froome.
Detailed parcours of the Tour de France 2012
F: Flat; MM: Medium Mountains; HM: High Mountains; TT: Individual Time Trial
- F 1 July Liège to Seraing, 198 km
- F 2 July Visé to Tournai, 207 km
- MM 3 July Orchies to Boulogne-sur-Mer, 197 km
- F 4 July Abbeville to Rouen, 214 km
- F 5 July Rouen to Saint-Quentin, 197 km
- F 6 July Épernay to Metz, 210 km
- MM 7 July Tomblaine to La Planche des Belles Filles, 199 km
- MM 8 July Belfort to Porrentruy, 154 km
- TT 9 July Arc-et-Senans to Besançon, 38 km
- HM 11 July Mâcon to Bellegarde-sur-Valserine, 194 km
- HM 12 July Albertville to La Toussuire – Les Sybelles, 140 km
- MM 13 July Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne to Annonay Davézieux, 220 km
- F 14 July Saint-Paul-Trois-Châteaux to Le Cap d’Agde, 215 km
- HM 15 July Limoux to Foix, 192 km
- F 16 July Samatan to Pau, 160 km
- HM 18 July Pau to Bagnères-de-Luchon, 197 km
- HM 19 July Bagnères-de-Luchon to Peyragudes, 144 km
- F 20 July Blagnac to Brive-la-Gaillarde, 215 km
- TT 21 July Bonneval to Chartres, 52 km
- F 22 July Rambouillet to Paris Champs-Élysées 130 km
