The Tour de France begins on a busy weekend in the sporting landscape, with French eyes on their all-star team at Euro 2020 and a last-16 tie with their Alpine neighbours Switzerland on Monday. With Wimbledon and Formula One on the calendar and an Olympic Games just around the corner, race director Christian Prudhomme knew their was only one way for the Tour to grab the headlines, and so it is no coincidence that stage one is perfectly suited for the highly tuned puncheur’s skillset of Julian Alaphilippe.
This reporter followed the carnival of a 2019 Tour when Alaphilippe grabbed the yellow jersey early in the race and kept it for two weeks. The French public came to the roadside to revel in a baking hot July when this charismatic bundle of power got out of his seat and embraced the hurt, desperate to stay in yellow for one more day, and another, and another. They even allowed themselves to dream that perhaps this classics specialist could really cling on through the Alps and the Pyrenees.
Egan Bernal eventually caught up with Alaphilippe as the road steepened, but it injected some much needed local love into the Tour and Prudhomme has virtually admitted in the build-up to the start of this race that he hopes to manufacture something similar from the Grand Depart, courtesy of a little home advantage. “He is not a Grand Tour rider, but he proved to us in 2019 that he could still wear the yellow jersey for a long time,” Prudhomme said of Alaphilippe recently. “There, this Tour is less mountainous than in previous years, there are a number of arrivals which are not at the top but downhill, and he is a remarkable descender. He is one of the best puncheurs in the world and the Tour begins with two stages in Brittany for the puncheurs […] He is the only Frenchman who can allow us to dream.”
This opening stage in Brittany is certainly more of a test than is traditional on the first day, with a coastal section that could bring in chaotic crosswinds as well as five categorised climbs, culminating in the uphill finish on the Côte de la Fosse aux Loup which will take any pure sprinters out of contention and play into the hands of one-day specialists like Alaphilippe. For the general classification contenders like Ineos Grenadiers’ Geraint Thomas and Richard Carapaz, UAE Emirates’ reigning Tour champion Tadej Pogacar and last year’s second-place Primoz Roglic, avoiding trouble is the name of the game here.
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Alaphilippe is not the only one who will be eyeing the maillot jaune, of course. Mathieu van der Poel is riding his first Grand Tour and will be a thrilling addition to the pack on days just like this one. Just like Van der Poel, Wout van Aert is another 26-year-old cyclo-cross world champion and this is the kind of lumpy profile that could bring the best from his all-round abilities. And what about Sonny Colbrelli? He won the Italian road race title recently and his Bahrain Victory team have been getting into a winning habit of late.
It may be a day prescribed for a French favourite but there is only so much script-writing organisers can do at the Tour de France. It tends to follow its own path, at the behest Mother Nature and the road itself more so than the director who waves the starting flag through a sunroof. Alaphilippe will face a battle for Grand Depart glory and it will be a treat watching the world champion attack from the very start. The road to Paris starts here.
Prediction
It may be a route designed for Alaphilippe but we fancy Van der Poel to produce something special on his first ever Grand Tour stage: a late solo charge to grab yellow.
Start time
The stage gets under way just after 11am (12pm local time) and is set to finish just after 4pm in the UK.
