2009 Tour de France Preview: Part 1 – The Route

I know we’ve been slacking on the posts lately, but I have plans for quite a lot of Tour de France coverage when it starts next Saturday (you’re welcome).

We’ll kick things off with a three part preview of this year’s Tour, starting today with a look at the 2009 Tour route.

The Beginning

Race director Christian Prudhomme always does a fantastic job making each year’s Tour a bit unique.  Often, much of this uniqueness comes from an exciting start.  A few years ago, that meant the Tour’s first visit to Great Britain.  This year, the race returns to Monaco for the first time in 45 years, and makes the principality the host of the Tour’s “Grand Start.”

If you’ve ever been to Monaco, watched a Formula 1 race there, or played Gran Turismo 3, you know that the scenery is second to none.  The Tour prologue (now it’s just an individual time trial) is often fairly boring because no one wants to burn themselves out on the first day.  That’s where the scenery comes into play.  I think I could watch 2 hours of stock photography of Monaco without getting bored.  Add a bike race, and I’m hooked.

This year also marks the return of the team time trial in stage 4.  The team trial is always interesting just because it’s so different from the other stages and it really highlights the team nature of the sport.  This year, it will probably just give Team Astana a :30 head start on the rest of the field.

The Middle

This year is a Pyrenees-first route, and features three huge mountain stages to kick off the second week.  The first one features a departure from sea-side Barcelona and the end of a week’s worth of Mediterranean scenery and a rise into the mountains with a finish atop Andorre Arcalis.  That’s right, the Tour is making a stop in Andorra, yet another tiny European principality.  Here’s what the last kilometer of that stage looks like:

That should be fun. 

The third day in the Pyrenees features both the climbs up the Col d’Aspin and the Col du Tourmalet, two of the Tour’s great mountains.

The Alpine stages start out with another mountain finish, and the second day features a Switzerland->Italy->France stage that ends in  a blistering descent out of the Petit-Saint-Bernard pass.  If you like horrific bike crashes, this is the stage for you.

The End

The biggest change in this year’s tour route is the climb up Mont Ventoux just a day before the ride onto the Champs-Elysees.  The Tour generally ends with a bunch of flat stages including an individual time trial.  The climbers finish their work with a week left in the race and just try to survive the time trial.  This year, the winner will be in doubt right up to the time the riders reach the top of Mont Ventoux.  For anyone who cares about the Tour de France at all, this is the stage to watch.

Up next, we’ll take a look at the Tour field and which riders to watch this year.