Picking out five key stages from a Tour de France route has rarely been this difficult. With five mountain ranges – the Pyrenees, Massif Central, Jura, Alps and Vosges – all visited across the route of the 2023 Tour, there are potentially pivotal days at just about every turn next July.
What’s more, in this breathless modern era, even seemingly milder days have the potential to catch fire. Witness Wout van Aert’s one-man show of force on the road to Longwy in 2022, for instance, or Thibaut Pinot and Julian Alaphilippe’s two-up effort en route to Saint-Étienne in 2019.
And yet, when the lights go up in the Palais des Congrès every October, some stages stand out more than others. In 2023, mind, there were at least eight or nine stages that caught the eye, and some particularly arduous days have been cast aside from this (very) short list, including the tough summit finish on the Grand Colombier on stage 13 and the passage over the Col de Joux Plane a day later.
At this early juncture, here are five stages that whet the appetite ahead of the big show in July.
Stage 6: Tarbes – Cauterets-Cambasque, 145km
When the Grand Départ last took place in the Basque Country in 1992, the Tour paid only a most perfunctory visit to the Pyrenees on its passage back into France. Javier Murguialday won in Pau after skirting the mountains on stage 3, while his breakaway companion, a youngster called Richard Virenque, announced himself to Le Grand Public by taking temporary hold of the yellow jersey. The GC men, including Miguel Indurain, preferred to keep their powder dry for the challenges ahead, namely the 63.5km team time trial two days later and the 65km individual time trial in Luxembourg at the end of the opening week.
Unlike in the Jean-Marie Leblanc era, there is no respite for overall contenders in the modern Tour. The men with designs on yellow in Paris will again be forced into action early and often in 2023. After a hilly opening stanza in the Basque Country, the Tour swings into the Pyrenees for two stages that could make a deep early impression on the general classification. The first, on stage 5, features the short but stiff Col de Marie Blanque ahead of the finish in Laruns, but the second to Cauterets is the main event.
Though just 145km in length, stage 6 from Tarbes features three mountain passes. First up is the Col d’Aspin (12km at 6.5%) after 68km, followed by the mighty Col du…
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