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The route of the next edition of the Tour de France will be unveiled shortly after noon on Thursday at the Palais des Congrès in Paris. But already we know the last two stages of the Alps, 48 hours from the final finish.
The tour will start from the Grand Place in Brussels on 6 July to pay tribute to the five-time Tour winner Eddy Merckx. He will then head south.
Until the end the organizers wanted, as every year, to keep the secret as long as possible on the race that will end on July 28 in Paris.
Fabrice Rigobert was able to discover the last two stages of the Alps, 48 hours before the finish. A tour of France that will take the highest road pbad in the Alps before returning to Paris.
We are in the car of Thierry Gouvenou, the director of the race on the lap is the one who traces the course after a good hour and half drive from Saint Jean de Maurienne, here we are at the foot of the highest rise of the large loop.
"There we attack the Col de l'Iseran, explains Thierry Gouvenou. We fate of Bonneval, it is true that we did a part in the valley, but a valley quite deceptive because it still took us to 1800 meters, runners will start to run out of oxygen and it goes when even have to go up to 2,770 meters, really the big difficulty is this altitude. "
12,900 kilometers of effort, the equivalent of Alpe d'Huez starting from 1,800 meters of altitude. At the top, no vegetation and surrounding peaks already snow-covered.
In its history the Tour has borrowed the Iseran seven times, the last in 2007, and only once from the Maurienne valley to the Tarentaise Valley. Vertiginous, before the final climb to Tignes at 2,113 meters, approached by a portion of unpublished road below the dam.
End of turn head in the clouds, to celebrate the centenary of the yellow jersey, including the next day with the 20th stage, between Albertville and Val Thorens, the highest ski resort in Europe where the finish will be judged end of a climb of 32 kilometers … at 2365 meters altitude, to the delight of the Mayor of Belleville, André Plaisance: "The last kilometer is quite nice! We think of the runners because already the course it will be quite selective, when they will arrive at the foot of the climb there remains 1 km certainly, it is not very long but then it's going to be difficult. "
André Plaisance had been waiting for four years for the good news for his resort, which was visited once only by the tour in 1994. Val Thorens, who wishes to develop his activity in the summer around the bike, specifies Bruno Gabet, the president of the tourist office : "We are going to have the Tour de Tourtourisme a week before, so we have some projects to present on this occasion.We know that there are summer destinations like Alpe d'Huez or Ventoux that it would be very difficult to compete, but we want to register on the long term, to bring more and more cyclists to Val Thorens and to propose a different bike. "
Val Thorens will be the third highest finish in the history of the tour after Izoard and Granon, the eve of the final Champs Elysees.
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