Tour de France is split into 21 stages: Nine flat stages, three hilly stages, seven mountain stages including five summit finishes , two individual time trials and two rest days.
One stage is performed every day, covers roughly kilometers, and takes about five and a half hours to complete. Each stage has a winner, and the rider that completes the most stages in the shortest amount of time goes onto win the overall title. They tend to cycle in a main group called a peloton, and have smaller groups break away to the front at almost every stage. The peloton will allow cyclists to stay ahead for a few minutes before rejoining them when they have lost momentum.
Breakaways are a great method to use if a cyclist is not an exceptional climber or sprinter, because it gives them a chance at victory. Sprinters — A sprinter is a cyclist that finishes a race by suddenly accelerating to a high speed, and often uses the slipstream of an individual cyclist or a group of cyclists in order to conserve energy.
Lead-out Trains — This is a strategy used to setup a rider for a sprint finish. Andre Greipel is a bit of a surprise addition to the team, but between him and Rick Zabel there are two sprint options. Example 2: Greipel, who was once automatic in GTs and has won 11 Tour de France stages, but at 38, his production is nowhere near what it once was. He tends to make strategic errors and, while he can out-descend any of us jokers in the cheap seats, his handling skills are, by WorldTour standards, a hot mess.
Love me some Rusty Woods, but there are a lot of obstacles to a top finish for him. Stage wins are forever, though. Few teams have seen as much roster upheaval the past few years as Ag2r.
They finally parted ways with perennial podium finisher Romain Bardet, and in his place picked up Classics rider Greg Van Avermaet, who for years was the rare rider who could really go head-to-head with Peter Sagan in both sprints and uphill finishes. What To Watch For: On paper, this team is legit.
Ewan is a bona fide beast in sprints. Thomas de Gendt will just keep hammering away in the break. And Philippe Gilbert is, well, Philippe Gilbert. Read that however you like. Ewan is the clear team leader. He has the best, most consistent run of results the past few years, and is almost always a top-five finisher in sprints.
Alaphilippe is probably the most reliable individual rider on the roster and is a serious threat for a Stage 1 or 2 win and an early yellow jersey. The team claims it's better, but that it chose not to bring him citing how it had set back his training makes us question whether things are as sanguine as portrayed. In his place, however, we get what might be the best story of the Tour: the return of sprinter Mark Cavendish, who's revived his career by returning to a former team.
Cav has 30 Tour stage wins and was once automatic, but suffered a three-year dry spell as he battled health issues. There will be lots of attention on him, which he doesn't always relish, and that puts more pressure on Asgreen and Alaphilippe. Tiesj Benoot has transformed from pure Classics racer to all-arounder, but he has smartly resisted the lure of trying to transform into a Grand Tour guy.
And Soren Kragh Andersen was one of the breakout stars of the edition with two bold stage wins out of breakaways. Two years ago it let Giro winner Tom Dumoulin walk. Last year, it parted ways with budding star Marc Hirschi in a saga that got nasty at times, and sprinter Michael Matthews.
Kragh Andersen? Jeez, who knows. The guy is anonymous for long stretches and then rips off amazing rides seemingly out of nowhere.
Alpecin is technically a wildcard team, but got an automatic entry as the top Pro Continental team in last year's rankings. That was largely on the work of van der Poel, who accounted for roughly a third of its wins, and on a shortened, partial season since he also races World Cup mountain bike events. Van der Poel is, simply, the most exciting racer in the sport today. He can win field sprints. He can win on short, sharp finish climbs; from long breakaways; whatever, whenever, however.
Merlier and Philipsen are solid sprinters, but this team is built around helping van der Poel win. The bottom tier of Tour teams is a motley gang, composed of wildcard invitees and scrappy WorldTour teams that exist on a budget a quarter of the size of the favorites.
None of them are gonna win the Tour. They have other objectives, but for all of them, winning even a single stage would be a dream come true. The race is broken up into 21 different parts or 'stages' and it isn't just flat roads.
The Tour takes the riders up into the mountains too. The different stages have different names:. Prologue : Each rider races against the clock in a short usually under six miles time trial.
Flat : Despite the name, it doesn't necessarily mean it's perfectly flat. Usually it's big packs of competitors riding together in a big group or 'peloton' for around miles. These end in one of two ways - a 'breakaway' victory by an individual or small group, or typically with a hair-raising bunch sprint. Time trial: A race against the clock. Similar to a prologue but a little longer.
These are shorter stages of around 30 miles as opposed to miles. Sometimes riders do it by themselves, sometimes they ride as a team. Mountain: These come in all shapes and sizes, climbing from sea level to 2, metres sometimes more than once in a day. The race was started by Henri Desgrange as a publicity stunt back in He came up with the crazy idea of a bike race around France in order to raise the profile of L'Auto, the newspaper he worked for.
The first race was a huge success with 60 riders covering an amazing 1, miles. The Tour is now like one big race with lots of smaller races going on inside it. Riders might race for each stage win or to earn the right to wear one of the famous jerseys, which can change hands many times during the race:. The green jersey is the points prize. You get points for being one of the first riders over the line on each stage.
It's usually won by a sprinter. But the tour isn't just about reaching the highest speeds - it's also known for its uphill struggles. The riders climb thousands of metres up Alpine mountains, with the best rider on those stages winning a snazzy red and white polka dot jersey. The white jersey is given to the best young rider - that's someone who's under 25 years old. At times the team appeared confused, the old mountain train being redundant and the new adventurous free-spirited approach conspicuous by its absence and perhaps not possible given the damage to their riders.
The Colombian had been in fine form since finally starting his season and arguably represented a stronger bet than Mas. The Spaniard did plug away to record a respectable GC result, but it will have been frustrating that he only really seemed to find his feet on the final mountain stage. Nairo Quintana had a couple of days in the polka-dot jersey but was a shadow of the rider that won the Tour and Vuelta, and the one who had an exception debut with the second-division team last year.
Not much more could have been asked of the other two, Connor Swift and Elie Gesbert, who tried to tee Quintana up for Pyrenean points. Michael Woods never sounded too enthusiastic about being a GC leader anyway, and he was soon right up there in the breakaways.
He fell just short in Le Grand Bornand and then was beaten by Poels — and also ultimately by Pogacar — in the fight for the polka-dots, before leaving to focus on his main target: the Olympic Games. At this point, every assessment should come with the caveat of fallen riders and in this case it was Simon Yates and Lucas Hamilton, the former being as near as you can get to a banker for mountain stage success and the latter making his debut in a bit of a breakthrough year.
Esteban Chaves gave the team something of a GC presence in the end, even if he was never part of the yellow jersey group, while Michael Matthews placed second in the points classification. In fact, Chris Juul-Jensen being called back from the break on stage 18 to set up the intermediate sprint, only to see another team working on the front, and then be sent back up to the break, raised a few question marks over their approach.
The overriding recollection of TotalEnergies in this Tour de France will surely be Pierre Latour launching all-out gurning offensives in the most random of locations. When he jumped after Julian Alaphilippe on the opening day, it looked like we might be seeing the old Latour, who won the white jersey in before a difficult couple of years with injuries.
He might not have been back at that level, but even so, there were question marks over whether he could have targeted his resources a little more carefully. Elsewhere, Edvald Boasson Hagen was meant to be a banker for some stage placings but had a poor Tour, while the rest of the riders infiltrated breaks but were never in the mix for a win.
Their former world champion Philippe Gilbert rode an anonymous Tour, while their most trusted baroudeur Thomas De Gendt was far from his usual self and reached Paris questioning his future in the sport. Young Harry Sweeny was a lively presence in the stage to Nimes, while Brent Van Moer showed the sort of intent that has seen him labelled a successor of sorts to De Gendt, but that was about as good as it got for the Belgian team.
Once again, crashes derailed their ambitions and perhaps make the above seem harsh. The team were a strong presence in the sprints last year but there was no lead-out train to be seen this time and the best Cees Bol could manage was sixth.
Team director Hilaire Van Der Schueren was criticizing his riders in the media — even publicly questioning the mindset of one — and Jan Bakelants had a pop back in the same publication. As with many teams, there were mitigating circumstances in the form of crashes and injuries, but suspicions the team lacked the quality to confidently take the step to WorldTour level were ultimately borne out.
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