Tour de France 2015: Stage 18 Preview

The Tour de France isn’t just a bike race. It’s a three-week-long commercial break, and the product it is advertising is France itself. While the Velon company pushes on-bike cameras as part of the future of cycling broadcasting, and super slow-motion cameras capture scrawny arms vibrating at 2,000 frames per second, it’s the panoramic landscape shots from the television helicopter which are the producers’ favourite. And today will have the single defining panoramic landscape shot of the whole Tour: the climb of Lacets de Montvernier.

Lacets de Montvernier is where road engineering meets calligraphy – a perfectly-formed curving line of symmetrical switchbacks on a steep-sided valley (the direct translation of ‘lacet’ is ‘shoelace’). When the peloton, or what’s left of it, is on this climb, the television shots will be as memorable as the race itself.

It’s a hard stage. The first half is a constant barrage of second and third-category climbs, followed by the Col du Glandon. Don’t be fooled by the relatively shallow average gradient of 5.1 per cent – this includes two significant descents, one about halfway up and the other not far from the top. Strip out these two sections, and the average gradient ramps up to 7.4 per cent, for the 17 kilometres of climbing. It’s the only Alpine stage without a summit finish, and it’s likely to offer two races – one for the escape and one for the GC riders, if any are feeling aggressive.

"With two such important stages coming up, the favourites might try to save energy, but with a climb like the Glandon mid-stage, the strongest will still emerge at the front. The riders will be torn between saving energy and attacking. And even more important than the climb, the descent of the Glandon is very technical. Riders like Contador and Nibali could make more time here than on the climb. In 1997, Richard Virenque and Festina put one minute into Jan Ullrich going down here. If a good descender gains time here, they should be able to hold that lead to the finish. It’s a good day to be a good climber and a good descender."

In terms of major climbs, first category and above, the Tour passes halfway today. Before the start, the riders have climbed seven, with seven to go.
There are seven categorised climbs in today’s stage, which is the highest number in the 2015 Tour. Stage 11 is in second place with six.
Two kilometres from the finish line, as the riders enter St Jean de Maurienne, the Tour clocks up 3,000 kilometres.