Tour de France Stage 20: A Tricky Time Trial Is the Last Test
Stage 20 – Lure to La Planche des Belles Filles – 36.2km - Saturday, September 19
Over the years, Tour de France organizers have tinkered with the individual time trial element of the race. Along with steadily reducing the number of kilometers that riders race solo against the clock, they’ve adjusted whether TT stages come early, middle, or late in the race, and have proposed unusual courses that are neither flat routes for TT specialists nor strictly uphill tests that favor climbers.
Saturday’s TT is maybe the best example of that. It’s relatively long by modern Tour TT standards, at 36.2km but is the only TT in this year's race. It starts with 30km of flat to gently rolling terrain, with a few tricky corners that will challenge handling skills for riders who choose TT bikes, which have different geometry and rider positioning than road bikes.
But the real test is the final 6.2km, which rises 500 meters to the finish atop the Planche des Belles Filles climb. You might remember this one: it’s become a Tour favorite since its first appearance in 2012, when eventual four-time Tour winner Chris Froome first made his talent known with a stage win. It’s featured four more times since, most recently just last year.
But the climb in the Vosges region has never been a TT finish, and its inclusion here makes the route quite challenging. Its moderate overall difficulty (8.5 percent average gradient) is belied by multiple steeper sections that ramp up and then ease off, culminating in a 20-percent section right at the finish. If you watched last year, you might note that the finish then was different, one kilometer farther up the road to the very summit. Saturday’s finish is the original, lower finish used in previous Tours, but it’s still a punch to the gut.
The challenge for riders for the course overall but especially the climb is appropriate pacing. Go out too fast on the flat section and you risk blowing up on the climb and losing chunks of time. But play it too conservatively and you won’t be able to regain lost seconds (or minutes) to riders who metered their effort more effectively.
But the contenders have three tools to use. First is simply their intimate knowledge of their form. Racers—and their coaches—are deeply familiar with their power curve, or the amount of power they can produce over a range of times from one second to 60 minutes. Armed with that information, plus knowledge of other aspects like aerodynamic drag and course profile, they’ll use software to create sophisticated pacing models to follow on race day. The second is their power meters and computer head units, which will give them instant feedback on how well they’re executing on that plan. Last: teammate intel. Since riders start one by one, each team will see riders go earlier in the day to try to lay down marker times and report back on how well their pacing strategy works on the real course, with time for adjustments before a team leader who is high on GC will take the start.
There’s a ton of precision there, and teams have the tools to create exacting models that offer the best chance of success. But the keys are whether the model data is good, and if the rider can execute, which is easier said than done when racing at the limit of physical ability. In the heat of the race, will riders be disciplined about following their pacing targets? If they can’t, how do they react and improvise? And are there mistakes in the modeling that mean the strategy is flawed? It’ll all play out on the road.
Riders to Watch
Ordinarily, two kinds of riders go full-tilt in TTs: overall contenders looking to put time into rivals, and TT specialists. This course reduces that to one type: the GC guys. TT specialists are typically bigger riders who can put down massive amounts of power, but the Belles Filles climb is steep enough and long enough that they won’t be in the mix. So this is really a battle of the top 10 riders on the general classification to try to reorder the standings as best they can. The top three may be pretty assured of the final podium in Paris, but the order could possibly flip some, with Astana's Miguel Angel Lopez just 30 seconds back of second-place Tadej Pogačar (UAE-Emirates). And spots 4-6 are separated by just 1:13 between them, so expect a fierce fight between Bahrain-McLaren’s Mikel Landa and Enric Mas of Movistar as they try to overtake Trek-Segafredo’s Richie Porte, himself trying for his best-overall Tour finish.
There’s one other rider in the mix to watch: INEOS-Grenadiers’s Richard Carapaz, because there are a maximum of 10 KoM points atop the climb. He has a slim lead in the KoM competition at 74 points total, but second and third place there are the top two in the overall classification: second-place Pogačar, with 72 points, and yellow jersey Primož Roglič (Jumbo-Visma) at 67. So there’s a race-within-a-race as officials will time the climb independently from the TT overall, with the fastest on the climb itself getting top points. Pogačar and Roglič will be trying for the stage win and to gain time on the other, so expect top climbing speeds from them even though they’re not targeting the KoM jersey. But Carapaz is 17th overall and has nothing to gain or lose by riding the whole course flat-out. He’ll likely throttle back on the flat to rolling section and then go full gas on the climb to try to win the KoM, something of a consolation prize for his team, which saw its Tour title defense vanish when Egan Bernal had back trouble and dropped out.
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When to Watch
In TTs, riders start in reverse order of the general classification, so the top 20, including Carapaz and the favorites, will go last. The top-10 will go at two-minute intervals, starting around 10:45 a.m. EDT, with the fastest clocking a little under 40 minutes start to finish. If you’re watching by 11 a.m., you’ll catch all the important action.
Because the first 75 percent of the course is so different than the finish, equipment choice will be a fun sidelight to watch for the gear nerds among us. Some racers will opt for aero-style road bikes outfitted with handlebar extensions and aero wheels for the full course. Others may choose a bolder strategy of starting on a TT-specific machine to optimize aerodynamics for the flatter section and then execute a bike switch at the base of the Belles Filles to an ultralight climbing machine. It’ll cost 10-15 seconds to swap, but the teams may calculate the weight savings on the climb is worth it.
How to watch the Tour de France
As a note, generally we find that TT results are interesting, the race itself sometimes not so much; watching riders go one by one can feel dry and clinical unless you’re a hardcore fan. At this point in the race, few riders have much to really race for; they’re just watching the clock to finish inside the time cut. And so far, TV coverage hasn’t evolved to provide the kind of constant live data that puts the GC battle in context. So it’s a great day for some second-screen action.
On a computer or tablet, pull up live text coverage that gives you the intermediate time splits. That’ll tell you which riders are pacing well, who went out too fast, and who’s having a bad day. Two great options are the Tour’s own Live Center, and Pro Cycling Stats—the live coverage link is in the upper right-hand part of the homepage. Both will have a spreadsheet of intermediate split times and other vital info that gives you a better idea of what’s really happening on the road.
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