A century after the maillot jaune became part of the Tour de France, the iconic jersey will be fought for in the clouds over the Alps in what has been revealed as a mountainous 2019 route which race director Christian Prudhomme described as “the highest Tour in history”.
The final three stages before the procession to Paris all feature tough Alpine climbing, as revealed by organisers ASO on Thursday. Stage 18 takes in the classic Col d’Izoard and Col du Galibier, stage 19 is rudely interrupted by the 2770m-high Col d’Iseran – Europe’s highest paved road – before racing culminates on stage 20 with a sapping 33km drag to a summit finish at Val Thorens.
The five mountain finishes and 30 categorised climbs contrast with only 54km of time trialling, made up of a 27km team time trial on stage two in Brussels and a equally short individual time trial around Pau on stage 13. The route could put off specialists against the clock like Tom Dumoulin, last year’s popular runner-up, who had said he was targetting the 2019 edition of the race.
“I would like to go to the Tour and the team would like me to go to the Tour, so basically we are on the same line,” the Dutchman said earlier this month. “I don’t want to slam the door yet, I always find it dangerous to say, when the course is not even known, that I will go to this Grand Tour or that Grand Tour next year. Maybe there will be a route where I think: I really do not have a chance to ride for the podium.”
Tour de France 2018: The story of the race
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It is likely to suit Team Sky however, and their ability to control the peloton through the mountains as they seek to win their seventh yellow jersey in eight years following Geraint Thomas‘s triumph in July.
The race will begin in Brussels on 6 July to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Eddy Merckx’s first Tour de France win, and head into the Vosges in the north-east of France, before cutting across the middle of the country and down towards the Pyrenees.
There the peloton will again take on the Col du Tourmalet – where 100 years ago the first rider to wear the yellow jersey, Eugene Christophe, suffered a famous mechanical – before heading across to its brutal and decisive finale in the Alps.
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