Wind, cobbles, punchy climbs, a handful of gruelling mountain-top finishes, almost no individual time trial:
the Tour de France organisers have designed one of the most exciting courses for the 2015 race, which will heavily favour the climbers.
The Tour will climax with a nervous, demanding penultimate stage finishing at l'Alpe d'Huez, with the race winner probably emerging from a nerve-wracking three-week dogfight. The race, which will feature time bonuses - 10, six and four seconds for the top three stage finishers - for the first time since 2008, will start from Utrecht, Netherlands, where the gusty winds could split the peloton and result in some fancied riders losing valuable time early on.
The third stage in northern France takes the bunch through cobbled sections again, on which lightweights often struggle, with the notable exception of the defending champion, Italy's Vincenzo Nibali, who this year hammered his rivals on the cobbles. "We can't say the route is tailor-made for Nibali because you never know what can happen," said the Tour director Christian Prudhomme. Nibali said: "One thing is sure: this Tour is going to be a huge battle. It's a tricky first week, very treacherous. The final week is extremely hard."
There are five mountain-top finishes but also a couple of very short, brutal climbs on the Mur de Huy, where the Fleche Wallonne classic ends, and at Mur de Bretagne. In the Pyrenees, finishes up at La Pierre Saint-Martin (15.3k at an average gradient of 7.4 per cent) and on the Plateau de Beille (15.8k at 7.9 per cent) should sort out the challengers.
It will be far from over, however, as four consecutive gruelling mountain stages are on the menu in the final week in the Alps. The 17th stage ending in Pra Loup is reminiscent of that in 1975 when France's Bernard Thevenet beat the Belgian great Eddy Merckx.
Organisers have spiced things up for the trek to Saint-Jean de Maurienne the following day with a very short and brutal 18-hairpin climb of the Lacets de Montvernier shortly before the finish. The 19th stage will be the queen stage with a 138k ride to La Toussuire featuring four demanding climbs, before the 20th stage, which should favour the aggressive riders as it is only 107k long with the Col du Galibier in the middle.
There will also be only 14k of individual time trials, a post-Second World War low.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article