The crossing of the Alps ended this Friday, and before joining Paris for an arrival on theAvenue des Champs-Élysées a little special this year (with the addition of the Montmartre Butte), there is one last opportunity for the backpackers this Saturday … and they are sure to have checked it! With only thirteen different stage winners and nine teams to have experienced the victory over this Tour de Francemany of them wanting to get the Grail to save their assessment and their Tour With a saving bouquet on the Gong, after three weeks of intense competiton. And if there is no doubt that the breakaway of the day should go to the end, it will certainly have to be very strong to integrate it and show it as strong on the roads always very steep from Ain, Jura and Doubs, with 184.2 km and almost 3,000 meters of elevation to swallow between Nantua and Pontarlier.
Video – Mauro Gianetti on Cyclism'Actu after the Alps
The struggle for the breakaway promises to be grand and infernal
The departure and the battle to form the breakaway therefore promise to be more than muscular and should not be failed under any pretext, with the Col de la Croix de la Serra (12.1 km at 4.1%) and the Côte de Valfin (5.7 km at 4.2%) to animate the first 50 km. The rest of the route remains rugged and could allow many racing movements among the most fit adventurers, before a slightly false flat prime to Pontarlier.
If they are dozens to be able to hope for this profile according to the race scenario, we think in particular of runners like Wout van Aert (Visma | Lease a Bike), Julian Alaphilippe (Tudor), Romain Grégoire, Valentin Madouas (Groupama-FDJ), Quinn Simmons (Lidl-Trek), Warren Barguil (Team Picnic PostNL), Jonas Abrahamsen (Uno-X Mobility), Axel Laurance (INEOS Grenadiers), Mathieu Burgaudeau (TotaalEnergies), Matej Mohoric (Bahrain Victorious), Alex Baudin, Neilson Powless (EF Education-EasyPost), Lucas Plapp, Mauro Schmid (Team Jayco-AlUla), Pablo Castrillo, Iván Romeo (Movistar Team), Louis Barré (Intermarché-Wanty), Bastien Tronchon, Aurélien Paret-Peintre (Decathlon Ag2r La Mondiale), Alex Aranburu (COFIDIS) Arnaud de Lie (Lotto) … An already long and quality list but yet far from being exhaustive, which still allows to realize the big battle to come this Saturday!
On the side of the general classification, the top 10 places seem frozen and that should not give rise to reversals of the situation, unless quite surprising failure but always possible on this type of profile and after such intense July. Tadej Pogacar, Jonas Vingegaard, Florian Lipowitz and others should be able to enjoy a day of Truce after two trying days in the Alps.
The 20th stage course
– Saturday July 26 – STEP 20 : Nantua – Pontarlier / 184.2 km
