In its quest for novelty and constant variety under its director, Christian Prudhomme, the Tour de France is sending its sacred cows to the abattoir one by one. The prologue time trial is long gone, the concept of balancing time‑trialling and climbing has been abandoned and long time trials are a thing of the past. No surprise, then, that the 2016 race does away with the unwritten rule that the Tour circumnavigates France clockwise one year, anticlockwise the next, Alps before Pyrenees then Pyrenees before Alps.
This is born of the need to end the serious action in the Tour with a spectacular stage on the final Saturday before the finish in Paris – the Alps are closer to the capital and offer a greater variety of climbs – which is why the 2016 Tour looks like an “odd-year” race, and is heavily backloaded with alpine climbs in the final week.
In that, it resembles the events of 2013 and 2015, which were dominated by Chris Froome, and with understandable relish, the Kenya‑born Briton fancies his chances. “It’s hugely important,” Froome said when asked how crucial it was to repeat his 2015 title. “I’m at the stage in my career where I think that I still have a huge amount to give. I’ve won two Tour titles already but I feel like I’ve got more left in me. There are no guarantees in the sport and there’s nothing to say that I’m going to win any more titles but I’m going to go back and give it my all.”
As in 2013, the ascent of Mont Ventoux opens the final phase; as Froome said in Paris, the Tour is not about one stage or a single climb, but it is hardly surprising that the “Giant of Provence” stands out for Team Sky’s double Tour winner. The Ventoux has immense historical significance for the Tour but it has gained more resonance in recent years. Not only did Froome crush the field there to effectively seal his win in 2013 a week from the finish, but his ascent that year also dominated the headlines for much of the key phase in the 2015 race after the Sky leader took the lead in the Pyrenees.
An internet video matching his ride up the Ventoux with his power data and cadence – leaked, one source said; pirated, Sky alleged, although they have yet to prove its provenance – sparked days of debate that led to Sky’s decision to release some of his power data and to the lab tests that Froome will make public later this year in order, he hopes, to quash allegations that his performances are not legitimate.
As Froome says, however, the Tour is not just about one day, and there is plenty to take in before and after the “Bald Mountain”. Prudhomme has had a penchant for moderately mountainous stages since 2007 and frequently laments the fact that France does not have the geography of Italy, where a race organiser can find serious climbing on any given day; as in 2008, the Tour heads for the Massif Central early on, with the day five finish at Le Lioran. There are none of the cobbled stages or short hilly finishes that marked the opening weeks of the last two Tours, but this is tough enough to find out anyone who is hoping to ride themselves into form.
The Pyrenees will be brief but intense, and the Ventoux will mark the start of a final week that looks ideal for Froome or Nairo Quintana, who pushed him hard this year. The 37km hilly time trial stage that follows the Provençal climb should have few fears for the rider who dominated a tough contre la montre near Gap in 2013, while the four-day finale after a stop-off in the Swiss city of Bern is suitably fearsome: an uphill finish at the Emosson dam – a short, steep climb where Froome suffered an off-day in the 2014 Dauphiné Libéré stage race – followed by an uphill time trial to Megève and two more days climbing ending in Morzine with the climb – and crucially, the descent – of the Col de Joux Plane.
The absence of a long, flat time trial is unlikely to favour this year’s Vuelta a España revelation, Tom Dumoulin of the Netherlands, but the wealth of climbing will be relished by Quintana and also by the Vuelta winner, Fabio Aru, the multiple Grand Tour winner Alberto Contador and the French climbers Thibaut Pinot and Romain Bardet.
Pinot is favoured by a slightly less nervous opening week, while Bardet’s descending verve means if he is well placed all French eyes will be on him when the leaders near the summit of the Joux Plane, which leads to one of the trickiest descents in the Alps.
The quest for novelty – new climbs, new scenarios, new heroes – is taking the Tour to some curious places and the Emosson dam is one such, initially ruled out because there was no obvious route to take the Tour’s caravan off the summit, until the Tour organisers learned of a huge tunnel linked to the lake’s hydroelectric scheme, which will enable the race vehicles to exit Emosson by going underground for four miles, 500 feet below the lake.
It is a “James Bond scenario” according to Prudhomme, who will be hoping that he has scripted another blockbuster.
