Tour de France Parcours: One Interesting Thing About Every Stage

Brevity rules! At least when it comes time to generating pre-Tour de France content.

Stage 1: Bilbao – Bilbao, 182km

You probably know that this is the second Grand Départ from the Basque Country, and that Basque riders have made their mark at the Tour de France during the entirety of all our lifetimes. Because I doubt if any of you were born before July, 1936, when Federico Ezquerra won a stage of the Tour from Nice to Cannes. Probably the first stage into the heart of Basque Country was the 1949 stage to San Sebastián, which will be visited for the third time. And in 1992, we got a Basque winner in San Sebastián when Miguel Indurain won the prologue there.

Stage 2: Vitoria-Gasteiz – San Sebastián, 209km

The Tour almost never starts with two consecutive challenging courses, what we now call “hilly” stages. I searched back to 1992, which was the only other start in Euskal Herredia, and which (following a prologue) launched two successive stages from San Sebastián, both of which were called “hilly,” though in fact the first of them ended in something of a mass sprint, and only by stage 2 did things get more convoluted.

By far the more analogous start was just two years ago, in Brest, when both of the first two stages in the coastal hills of cycling-mad Bretagne featured late climbs and uphill finishes. The upshot of this two-part opening drama was that on day 2, Mathieu van der Poel stole away from the peloton and into yellow for a while (as the race transitioned to normal week 1 excitement levels). So for you classics/puncheur types eyeing Grand Départ glory: he who laughs last, laughs loudest.

Stage 3: Amorebieta-Etxano – Bayonne, 193km

This is the last time the Tour de France will get a glimpse of salt water (unless the Dordogne gets brackish down that way?). That’s not totally strange — the 2019 Tour never got even a single look at the Atlantic, or Mediterranean. But this Tour is decidedly inland, barely even coming in contact with provinces which have coastline. It’s also very much the…