Thursday’s announcement of the Tour de France route for 2023 was not short on curiosity. You’ve probably heard a few bits about it already — the lack of time trialling, the variety of climbs — but if you dig in a bit you can see what a departure this is from… expectations? The Tour in recent years has done a good job of spicing up the route compared to 20 years ago, and this was no exception. In fact, it went even further than usual.
Obviously we will pick through all the details next summer, and for sure hit up Will J’s twitter account (@cyclingalps) for some color on the climbs. But for now, let’s hit a few points which I think tell the story of the Tour rollout.
1. Le Grand Départ Is Extra Cool
The Tour is launching from the Pays Basque, as it’s known on the French side of the modern border, although the action will happen on the Spanish side with two very beautiful and fun stages, about as cool an opening weekend as you can get within a short drive of France. It starts with a coastal stage around Bilbao, which will look spectacular and will feature a few small climbs on the way back to town, leaving us wondering all day what sort of finale we will get.
Stage 2 is a bit more definitively not a sprinters’ stage, and is in fact a great opportunity for the punchy climbers to take a shot at grabbing yellow. The route is a truncated and rather muted ode to the beautiful terrain of the Klasikoa Donostia, a/k/a Clasica San Sebastian — which is not a criticism, it’s how the Tour always handles borrowed Classics courses. And for sure it won’t be a sprinters’ day.
From there the Tour will cross the border toward a sprint finish in Bayonne, bringing the curtain down on the Basque stages with a chance for people to remember that this area is sometimes called the French Basque Country. A pretty entertaining start to things, and no long transfers!
2. Do Early Mountain Stages Change Things?
One byproduct of starting in Spain is that unless you want to stretch the parcours far north…
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