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Tour de France organisers unveil 2004 route
Paris, Oct 24: Organisers of the Tour de France have announced the route for the 2004 tour. The next Tour de France will be far from business as usual, after an extremely unusual race route was unveiled on Thursday (23 October).
Paris, Oct 24: Organisers of the Tour de France have announced the route for the 2004 tour. The next Tour de France will be far from business as usual, after an extremely unusual race route was unveiled on Thursday (23 October).
After the huge success of last July's centenary edition, organisers have tried something completely different, which might mean that five-time champion Lance Armstrong, who will be bidding for his sixth win, has to wait until the very end of the three-week event to make his move.
For the past five years, Armstrong has essentially beaten his rivals in the long individual time trials, the first of which is traditionally held at the end of the first week. But this time, the first solitary effort of the Tour will take place only four days before the finish in Paris and it will come on the infamous 21 turns of the climb to l'Alpe d'Huez.
The 13.5-kilometre time trial from Bourg d'Oisans to the Tour's most famous summit should be the undisputed highlight of the race.
Armstrong's morale could be boosted by the fact that he won the last uphill time trial held on the Tour, in 2001 between Grenoble and Chamrousse.
Tour organisers have also said that the list of teams to be admitted to the race will be announced before March 1 to avoid the controversy of recent years.
Tour director Jean Marie Leblanc said the final participants will be "fourteen teams who will have qualified by the end of December 2003, after the enrolment of any new ones and in the order of the UCI ranking established at the end of this season, and eight teams invited by the organisers by March 1, among the first division teams who will have submitted their candidacy," he then added: "The organisers will have the time to choose among the teams best fitted for a three-week race that will be quite mountainous and will only end in Paris."
To make the finish even more exciting, another 56km individual time trial will take place on the penultimate day, on a bumpy course around Besancon. The strongest teams will not even have a chance to make a decisive move in the traditional time trial held between Cambrai and Arras along the First World War battlefields, since time differences will be limited to two minutes and 30 seconds.
Overall, climbers, and especially Spanish and Italian riders, should be favoured, even though the big mountain stages look less demanding than in 2003.
While the centenary race involved riders climbing all the big summits in Tour history, the Galibier, Tourmalet or Isoard will not feature in the 2004 event. Riders will first tackle the Pyrenees with a similar programme as in 2002.
On July 16, the first serious mountain stage will take the race to la Mongie via the Aspin pass while climbers will again have their say when the next day's stage finishes at the Plateau de Beille.
The big stage in the Alps will take the Tour from Bourg d'Oisans to Le Grand Bornand, with the Madeleine pass the highest summit at 2,000 metres.
The first half of the race will favour sprinters, with a promising fourth stage in which the bunch will tackle the classic Mur de Grammont, as in the Tour of Flanders, and cobbled sections of the Paris-Roubaix Classic.
Bureau Report
Tour organisers have also said that the list of teams to be admitted to the race will be announced before March 1 to avoid the controversy of recent years.
Tour director Jean Marie Leblanc said the final participants will be "fourteen teams who will have qualified by the end of December 2003, after the enrolment of any new ones and in the order of the UCI ranking established at the end of this season, and eight teams invited by the organisers by March 1, among the first division teams who will have submitted their candidacy," he then added: "The organisers will have the time to choose among the teams best fitted for a three-week race that will be quite mountainous and will only end in Paris."
To make the finish even more exciting, another 56km individual time trial will take place on the penultimate day, on a bumpy course around Besancon. The strongest teams will not even have a chance to make a decisive move in the traditional time trial held between Cambrai and Arras along the First World War battlefields, since time differences will be limited to two minutes and 30 seconds.
Overall, climbers, and especially Spanish and Italian riders, should be favoured, even though the big mountain stages look less demanding than in 2003.
While the centenary race involved riders climbing all the big summits in Tour history, the Galibier, Tourmalet or Isoard will not feature in the 2004 event. Riders will first tackle the Pyrenees with a similar programme as in 2002.
On July 16, the first serious mountain stage will take the race to la Mongie via the Aspin pass while climbers will again have their say when the next day's stage finishes at the Plateau de Beille.
The big stage in the Alps will take the Tour from Bourg d'Oisans to Le Grand Bornand, with the Madeleine pass the highest summit at 2,000 metres.
The first half of the race will favour sprinters, with a promising fourth stage in which the bunch will tackle the classic Mur de Grammont, as in the Tour of Flanders, and cobbled sections of the Paris-Roubaix Classic.
Bureau Report