Issued on: Modified:
The 2023 route for the men’s Tour de France unveiled Thursday passes across all five of the nation’s mountain ranges, favouring climbers such as 2019 champion Egan Bernal.
The 3,404km route embarks from Spain’s Basque Country on July 1 for a route featuring eight mountain stages and four hilly stages with just one medium length individual time trial placed early in the final week.
The route however ignores almost all of western and northern France.
“Over five or six years it evens out and we eventually get everywhere,” race organiser Christian Prudhomme said.
The killer stage in the 21 day race appears to be stage 17 from Saint-Gervais Mont-Blanc to Courchevel, doted with four peaks and ascending way above the tree line to 2,300m of altitude where the oxygen is thin.
That kind of mountain stage…
