Tour de France organisers ASO have confirmed further details of the opening week of the 100th edition of the Grand Boucle, taking place in 2013, when the race will resume on the French mainland with a team time trial in and around Nice following its first ever visit to Corsica.
That team time trial will take place on Stage 4 of the 2013 Tour on Tuesday July 2, and will mark the 36th time the race has visited the city on the Côte-d’Azur, the sixth-largest in France by population.
The stage will finish on the Promenade des Anglais, which also hosts the arrivée each spring of the “race to the sun,” Paris-Nice.
The following day will see a road stage starting in Cagnes-sur-Mer, to the west of Nice, heading towards Cannes; where the race heads after that has not yet been confirmed.
There are a number of tempting options, however. The Alps lie to the north, so a transitional stage to somewhere like Gap is a possibility.
That’s the prediction of Thomas Vergouwen on his Velowire website, who in past years has proved adept at predicting the route of the entire Tour prior to its official unveiling.
However, next year’s race takes in the Alps before the Pyrenees, so in 2013 you would ordinarily expect the order to be reversed.
That might mean a sprint-friendly stage towards somewhere such as Marseille or Aix-en-Provence.
If the Tour were to head west, that would put the race within striking distance of Mont Ventoux, last tackled on the penultimate day of the 2009 race.
The opening days of the 2013 Tour on Corsica feature three road stages, the first of those likely to result in a sprint finish which could give Mark Cavendish a chance to claim the one grand tour leader’s jersey to have eluded him so far.
Straight into the sun is perhaps an exaggeration, but at that time it would be about ESE, and there are bits of the road which head roughly SSE, so...
7 October was just a bit of harmless fun until the "msm" ramped it up.
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an example of Kesgraves "best cycling infrastructure in the country" https://maps.app.goo.gl/GsCMbzDUTPdq59qS9
They are not going full gas at every point. They would destroy themselves. And tactics, they save themselves for when effort is really needed....
It turns out that that is national police policy. We found out from this process that there is national 'secured by design' policy which causes...
Been available for quite a while, full GRX mechanical 12 speed. Probably around the same time as 105 mechanical 12 speed if I were to guess.
Less harmful citrus degreaser is easy to find at £8 or less for 5 litres. Works ok for me, even diluted up to 4:1. Both paraffin and white spirit...
Nope, it's to keep your straps down and quieter. Plus most sunglasses are polycarbonate and aren't going to shatter like glass anyway
And, more seriously, where's the coverage of the closure of the cycle lane which forces you to cycle on the Totton bypass.