As riders return to training and planning for the 2024 season this month, it's no surprise that numerous big names are already scoping out the race routes for their biggest goals of the new season.
Wout van Aert and Jumbo-Visma have recently carried out recons of the Dwars door Vlaanderen and Tour of Flanders courses, and now Tom Pidcock is exploring the gravel stage of the Tour de France.
The Briton, currently world and Olympic cross-country mountain bike champion and former cyclocross world champion, is no stranger to the rough roads. He checked out the gravel roads around Troyes with his Ineos Grenadiers teammate, Belgian climber Laurens De Plus, on Thursday.
The stage, which runs 199km beginning and ending in Troyes, will see the peloton take on 32.2km of gravel roads across 14 sectors with numerous hills thrown into the mix for good measure.
It's set to be one of the key stages of the Tour de France, with the gravel strips sure to provide GC action two days after the mid-race time trial. Pidcock, who has 16th and 13th places to his name at the Tour, figures to be a major player on the day given his off-road experience.
Pidcock hasn't commented on the inclusion of the gravel stage next July, though several others – including Jumbo-Visma CEO Richard Plugge and Soudal-QuickStep contender Remco Evenepoel – have questioned the need for such a stage.
"Should gravel sections like that absolutely still be included in a Grand Tour or in other, normal, races?" Evenepoel asked following the Tour de France route presentation. "I don't really think it's necessary."
Tour de France route designer Thierry Gouvenou said that "we had to come up with something clever" in order to break up what would have otherwise been a procession of sprint stages during the middle part of the 2024 Tour.
"We made a promise never to have more than one sprint stage in a row on the Tour," Gouvenou said.
"With the configuration of the 2024 route, we will find ourselves on the plains from the exit of the Alps on stage 4 to Cantal on stage 11. So, we had to come up with something clever."
The stage, which packs six sectors into the final 30km, is set to be one of the highlights of the race next summer, with Gouvenou predicting, "if some of the big teams decide to go all out for their leaders then there'll be a lot of tension at the back and the elastic will snap, that's for sure."
Pidcock is sure to form part of the Ineos Grenadiers squad at the Tour next year, though the team's planning for the race is still largely under wraps.
Last year's fifth-placed finisher Carlos Rodríguez has yet to announce his goals, while Egan Bernal looks set to target the Vuelta a España, and 2018 Tour winner Geraint Thomas recently said "it would be nice to go back" to the Giro d'Italia, while also noting that he missed the Tour in 2023.
