Route Map
 
We now have the route for the 2010 Tour de France which was announced in Paris on Wednesday 14th October.

Our aim is to follow the 2010 route as closely as possible but practicality and safety may dictate that some variations are made. Owen Slot, Chief Sports writer for The Times was in Paris for the launch and has written a special report just for us. Click here to read Owen's report.

You can find out more about each stage by going to the Choose your stages page of the website.




From Owen Slot in Paris

Riders of the Tour de Force 2010 may be enchanted to know that next year’s Tour will take you through the Champagne region of France. You may also like to know that you go through the vineyards of Pauillac. So much for the good bits. You may also appreciate that it is not just you who thinks that next year’s Tour route is hard because the professional peloton itself is unanimous in agreement.

Reporting (almost) exclusively live from the Palais des Congres in Paris where the great and the good of the Tour were all in attendance, I can reveal that if you are riding the Tour de Force with Rick Wates and the crew next year, you get to start in Rotterdam and head south through Belgium, you will probably get to break your virginity on your first ever serious ride over cobblestone roads, you get what is a comparatively easy run through the Alps and then an absolute beast of a final week in the Pyrenees.

This year’s tour marks the 100th anniversary of the first time the Tour climbed the Pyrenees and in their efforts to pay homage to history, the obsessive organisers have shown no consideration for us amateurs whatsoever and gone completely mountain-mad. Not content with one ascent of the iconic Pyrenean summit, the Col du Tourmalet, they are taking us up there twice. But be brave. It may help to know that back in 1910, the first ever rider to crest the summit of the Tourmalet appeared out of the mist on foot, carrying his bike. And in his intense sense of physical despair, he railed at the organisers, calling them “assassins”.

So the Pyrenees will be a challenge. The frustrating news for Tour de Force riders is that there is not much letting up from beginning to end. The time trials are usually the short stages, but next year there will only be the prologue in Rotterdam and then you have to wait all the way until the penultimate stage of the race before the other, a 51km ride from Bordeaux to Pauillac which will be particularly splendid.

What you won’t see on this year’s Tour is anything of Brittany, Normandy or the French north west. What you will get is the classic cobblestone sections in Belgium and a number of other particularly famous rides. The 10th stage from Chambery to Gap, for instance, takes you down the same stretch of road where, in 2003, Lance Armstrong was so nearly taken off his bike by the falling Joseba Beloki and somehow managed to ride across a field instead. Extraordinary bike-handling; you can find it on YouTube.

You also climb the ball-breaking ascent from Port de Pailhères to Ax-3 Domaines where Armstrong almost lost the yellow jersey to Jan Ullrich.

In fact, Armstrong was on hand yesterday in the Palais des Congres to give Tour de Force riders (again, not quite exclusively) his view on the Tour they face. “The first few days will provide a lot of drama for people. Crosswinds, the hills around Spa and Brussels and the cobblestones – people will be nervous for days and days if not weeks. But every Tour is for climbers. You can dissect it a number of ways, but it’s the Tour de France and the best man still wins.” Whether this was a reference to Steve Young or Andrew Wates remained unclear.

This was the view of Mark Cavendish, the British sprinter, on this year’s Tour: “It’s harder than last year. For me normally the time-trial day is a rest day and there is only one time trial after the prologue. It’s going to be hard.”

And these were the wise words from the brains behind British cycling, the British Cycling performance director, Dave Brailsford: “There are no real lets-chill-out-today stages. You are going to have to be on your game all the time.”

In the words of Christian Prudhomme, the director of the Tour de France, “It is going to be a big fight.” Indeed it is. But it’s going to be a massive experience too.