Details of Tour de France 2013 Unveiled

From 29 June to 21 July 2013, the hundredth edition of the Tour de France will take the cyclists, support staff, spectators and viewers on a 3,360-km route that will remain exclusively within France’s borders.

It is the first time in ten years, the route of Le Tour will remain entirely within the borders of France. The biggest race in the world will invite viewers to discover the many UNESCO World Heritage listed sites, from the Calanques de Piana to the gardens of the Château de Versailles, including the Cathedral in Albi and the historical centre of Lyon.

After its Corsican sojourn, Le Tour 2013 will continue to bathe in the theme of water: including Nice, Marseilles, Saint-Malo and Mont-Saint-Michel, six stages will finish at the seaside, whilst the pack will have the opportunity to ride along the four biggest rivers in France and pass alongside the shores of the Serre-Ponçon and Annecy Lakes.

During the three weeks of racing, the action will also be aesthetically pleasing. Once again, a broad range of terrains has been chosen, to offer all types of riders the possibility to shine, in all the sequences that Le Tour will include.

Time-trialists will have pride of place as part of a team in Nice, then on their own at the Mont-Saint-Michel, whilst the sprinters should be looking forward to the finishes in Marseilles, Montpellier or also Saint-Malo.

The Pyrenean programme includes climbs recently incorporated into the list of Tour de France’s “elite passes”, such as the Col de Pailhères or Col Hourquette d’Ancizan passes. Le Tour’s leading lights will have a date in their diaries with the Giant of Provence, the Mont Ventoux, which has not been climbed since 2009. If they are dynamic, the climbers will then have a sufficient amount of kilometres and steep gradients to really set off the fireworks in the Alps.

After the final time-trial, there will still be 615 kilometres of road to cover before the finishing line, in particular a double ascent of the Alpe d’Huez climb. The final time-trial of Le Tour has not taken place so far from the finish in Paris since 1975. More importantly, there will still be more than 140 km of climbing spread over three highly intense stages: the Alpe d’Huez will have 42 bends this year, because the riders will be faced with a double climb up to the ski resort on Thursday afternoon. Another high altitude challenge will await them the next day as they head to Grand Bornand, then also at the finish in Semnoz, opposite Mont-Blanc, which they will discover 24 hours before arriving at the Champs-Elysées.

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