race preview

The Tour de France 2023 route was revealed yesterday in Paris, featuring numerous sprints, plenty of tough medium mountain stages and a historical shortage of time trial kilometres. There are just enough long and steep mountains like Col de la Loze, Col du Tourmalet, Joux Plane and Grand Colombier, dotted around the three weeks but without any mountain stage rivalling the difficulty of the Col du Granon stage in 2022. The sole 22 kilometre time-trial contains 650 metres elevation gain, which makes this the ideal Tour de France parcours for General Classification contenders with a weak time trial such as Enric Mas, David Gaudu, Romain Bardet, Mikel Landa and Richard Carapaz. Unfortunately for them, being poor against the clock does not make you climb fast, with Pogačar, Roglič, Vingegaard and Evenepoel all being exceptional time trial riders but also the best climbers.