Noticiero El Big Picture del Deporte: CyclingTips, Nairo Quintana, 15% better, is a frightening prospect for those he’ll line up against in July

“He’s one of cycling’s greats,” Emmanuel Hubert said on the weekend. “And he’s still around 15% short of top form. There’s more to come.” Based on the weekend’s results, a Nairo Quintana that’s 15% better than that is a frightening prospect for those he’ll line up against in July. Maybe it’s not time to write him off just yet. Quintana has been a force in the mountains for as long as he’s been in the WorldTour, so it wasn’t necessarily surprising to see him producing a powerful performance on the slopes of Mont Ventoux. What was a surprise, however, was the way that he won, because it was a stunning rebuttal of all the criticism that’s been directed his way for the last couple of years.

• On the climb up Mont Ventoux, Arkéa-Samsic delivered a tactical masterclass that underlined a burgeoning self-belief. The team massed to the front of the peloton as Ventoux loomed ahead, with Barguil and Quintana’s compatriot Winner Anacona ratcheting up the pace, stringing the peloton out behind them.
• At 7.2 km to the stage finish, Anacona pulled to the side, and in the same instant, Quintana took flight, surging once, glancing back, and surging again. Jumbo-Visma climber Sepp Kuss was the only rider able to follow the acceleration, and that lasted all of 100 metres. By the finish line, Quintana had put 1:20 into his rivals, despite an organised chase behind him. It was, to quote Thibaut Pinot at the stage finish, “imperial”.  
• Since Saturday’s result, more has been made of Quintana’s time up the climb than the victory itself. Some have breathlessly claimed that it’s the fastest ascent of Mont Ventoux in history – which it is, sort of, but the race finished at Chalet Reynard, halfway up the climb and before it exits the tree-line. Quintana had a tailwind, was alone off the front and didn’t have to play any tactical games – he could just concentrate on punching out a lazy 6.8 W/kg for the duration of his move.

References:

CyclingTips, Don’t write Nairo Quintana off yet, Iain Treloar, February 17, 2020.

Noticiero El Big Picture del Deporte: Martínez, Quintana y Bernal, Un podio de la CRI colombiana de gran nivel

Colombia, el país con una de las mejores canteras de ciclismo en el mundo, disfrutó en la contrarreloj individual en la categoría élite de los campeonatos nacionales de ciclismo colombiano 2020 el duelo de 3 ciclistas de gran prestigio mundial. Ganó la medalla de oro, Daniel Martínez (EF Education First), el especialista, con un tiempo de 48:02 y un promedio de 51.714 kms/hora. La medalla de plata fue para Nairo Quintana (Team Arkéa Samsic) a 28 segundos, con un promedio de 51.216 kms/hora. El bronce fue para el campeón del Tour de Francia 2019, Egan Bernal (Team Ineos), a 32 segundos, con un promedio de 51.146 kms/hora. 

La cuarta posición la ocupó Brandon Rivera (Team Ineos) a 1:51, con un promedio de 49.796 kms/hora. El quinto fue Esteban Chaves a 1:57, y un promedio de 49.697 kms/hora. 

Las diferencias con el resto de competidores fueron enormes. El sexto Carlos Ballesteros perdió 4:20 y el séptimo Winner Anacona 4:24.  

ProCyclingStats, 2020 National Championships Colombia - ITT (NC), Jan 30, 2020.

Time trial  »  Pesca  ›  Pesca   (41.4k).

Date: 30th January 2020
Avg. speed winner: 51.71 km/h
Race category: Men Elite
Start/finish: Pesca › Pesca

Noticiero El Big Picture del Deporte: L'Équipe, Emmanuel Hubert, patron d'Arkéa-Samsic, nourrit « de fortes ambitions » sur le Tour 2020

L'Équipe, Emmanuel Hubert, patron d'Arkéa-Samsic,  nourrit « de fortes ambitions » sur le Tour 2020, 7 janvier 2020. 

Emmanuel Hubert (manager général d'Arkéa-Samsic) : « Notre recrutement 2020 a clairement été effectué afin de pouvoir participer aux plus grandes courses du calendrier. Nous nourrissons de fortes ambitions (sur le Tour de France 2020). Les arrivées de Nairo Quintana, Nacer Bouhanni et Diego Rosa avaient pour but de démontrer nos intentions à ce niveau-là. Le prochain Tour de France a été dessiné pour les grimpeurs et nous avons construit une équipe riche tant au niveau individuel que sur le plan collectif, aussi bien pour cette année que pour les suivantes.

• Nairo Quintana a gagné une étape du Tour de France en 2019(la 18e étape, entre Embrun et Valloire). Il a aussi déjà terminé par deux fois deuxième du classement général du Tour en 2013 et 2015, et une fois troisième en 2016. Le champion de France Warren Barguil s'est quant à lui classé dixième du Tour l'an passé en étant au contact des tout meilleurs pendant trois semaines. Avec deux grimpeurs d'un tel niveau, nous pouvons espérer de belles choses sur cette édition du Tour de France 2020.

Noticiero El Big Picture del Deporte: Cycling Weekly, Julian Alaphilippe on the brink of a first French winner of the Tour de France since 1985

Julian Alaphilippe (Deceuninck-Quick-Step) has so far declined to confirm whether or not he intends to target the yellow jersey in 2020, but we have a sneaky suspicion that the yellow jersey is already in his sights. It is in his interest to play down expectations so that he can again enter the race as an underdog. But we might just be on the brink of a first French winner of the Tour de France since 1985.

• The Frenchman was able to become a yellow jersey contender in 2019 partly because nobody expected him to put in such a defence of it. For that matter neither did he – he attacked exuberantly in the first few weeks of the race without expecting to have a GC race to fight, and surprised himself by the strength of his legs in the time trial and the mountains, before fatigue at last caught up with him during the final week.

If he makes the yellow jersey his primary target, and plans a training routine around it, could he ride even better this time?

References: 

Cycling Weekly, Seven bold predictions for the 2020 racing season, Stephen Puddicombe, January 1, 2020.

Noticiero El Big Picture del Deporte: Cycling News, Team Ineos has elevated winning the Tour de France to a fine art, leaving just a few crumbs for their rivals

Team Ineos has elevated winning the Tour de France to a fine art, leaving just a few crumbs for their rivals. Team Sky – and now Team Ineos – have shaped the last decade of the men's WorldTour and look set to continue their Tour de France dominance for another decade with Egan Bernal. They could even aim to win all three Grand Tours in 2020. Team Ineos have used their big budget, talented riders and disciplined approach to stack up marginal gains and emerge as the very best super team in the men's WorldTour.

• Team Ineos are arguably the best team of the last decade, having won the Tour de France six times since 2012 while in their former guise of Team Sky, and then a seventh time with Egan Bernal as Team Ineos in 2019.
• Team Ineos are the marmite of pro cycling, with their detractors as numerous as their fans. The team management and sponsors do not seem to care, and Dave Brailsford makes sure his bot-like riders are focused and successful rather than outgoing and original.
• Thomas and Bernal started the Tour de France as joint team leaders, avoiding mishaps and marking Julian Alaphilippe before Bernal made his move on the Col de l'Iseran during the shortened stage to Tignes. He went on to become the first-ever Colombian to win La Grande Boucle and, at just 22, the youngest winner in more than 100 years. Thomas joined him on the podium to give Team Ineos a rare, but indicative, 1-2 in Paris.

Key riders

Egan Bernal: The former mountain-bike racer has always appeared destined for greatness and confirmed it in 2019 with victory at the Tour de France. Bernal oozes class and calm, with his climbing and bike skills making him perfectly suited to the three-week demands of Grand Tour racing. Gianni Savio, who helped Bernal turn professional at 19 and then sold him on to Dave Brailsford, warned it was the start of the Bernal era. It definitely feels like it, and Bernal will be back at the Tour de France in 2020.

Chris Froome: Multiple fractures, including an open femur fracture, would have convinced most 34-year-old riders to retire, but Froome is determined to make a comeback and ride the 2020 Tour de France, even if he faces a race against time to be at his best in July.

Geraint Thomas: The likeable Welshman insists his 2018 Tour de France victory has left him wanting more. However, he turns 34 in May and may have to work for Bernal if he turns down the chance to lead at the Giro d'Italia.

References: 

Cycling News, 2020 Team Preview: Team Ineos, Stephen Farrand, Jan. 3, 2020.

The Big Picture of Sport News: Velo News, How Remco Evenepoel, Egan Bernal, and other Generation Z riders are changing pro cycling

There’s an undeniable surge of youth within the peloton. It isn’t just one exceptional young rider, but a swarm. What do all these riders have in common? And how could they achieve so much so soon? Other than being fast and young, there are some interesting threads and commonalities. First off, many of today’s new stars have the right DNA. Many of today’s most astonishingly successful young riders also have unbridled ambition. 

• Quite literally, they were born to race. Bernal’s father, though never a pro, was a top-rated amateur in Colombia, and gifted his son with his legendary VO2max that dips into the low 90s.
• Of course, van der Poel’s DNA is almost an unfair advantage. His father was Adri van der Poel, a fabled pro with a nearly 20-year career who won such races as Tour of Flanders and Liège-Bastogne-Liège. His grandfather is French legend Raymond Poulidor, whose career stretched across cycling’s glory days from Jacques Anquetil to Merckx.
• The riders of Generation Z are here, and they’re suddenly making an impact in every race they start. The leading lights of today were all born in the late 1990s. Or, in Evenepoel’s case, in 2000. The prodigiously talented Belgian is the first WorldTour winner born in this century.
• In many ways, today’s generation is the peloton’s disruptor. Today, Bernal, van der Poel, and those like them, look poised to turn cycling on its head. It’s too early to say how far this vanguard can go, but early indications suggest they could rewrite how we view modern cycling.
• The arrival of these young prodigious riders is disrupting the traditional inner workings of teams at another level. Team Ineos brought Bernal to the Tour last year even though he had never raced more than eight days in a row up to that point. Why? The numbers proved it. 
• The flood of young, charismatic talent certainly comes at a good time for the sport.
• To attract a new generation of fans, professional racing needs young, exciting, charismatic riders. And suddenly the sport is overflowing with candidates to fill the void.
• What’s more impressive is the depth and quality of performances that today’s young riders have been able to deliver. It’s not as if they’re winning a stage at a second-tier event. They’re taking home the biggest trophies on the calendar.
• Cycling’s history is full of riders who make immediate and dramatic imprints in their rookie seasons. Eddy Merckx won the first of his record seven Milano-Sanremo victories at the age of 20. Greg LeMond finished third in his Tour de France debut at 23, and won two years later. And even the controversial Lance Armstrong won the world title at 21, still the youngest ever to earn the rainbow stripes.

Another key factor is that today’s riders are at the cutting edge of the incremental advances that have steadily improved human performance over the past 20 years.

• Better science, nutrition, and technology, which helps any bike racer, only acts as an accelerant when applied to today’s über-talented youngsters. Lighter frames, aero helmets and skin-suits, calibrated diets and recovery, coupled with the granular attention to detail in training programs means young riders can advance their racing development at a staggering rate. If they have the motor, and the skills to back it up, they can expect to perform almost immediately.

Many insiders cite a cleaner peloton for helping to clear the path for young talent to shine.

• The fact that a 22-year-old can win the Tour is viewed by many as a sign that cycling has leveled the playing field dramatically since the days of a peloton at two speeds.
• The world’s blossoming talent pool has delivered a Colombian, a Russian raised in France, a Belgian, and a Dutchman of royal pedigree, revealing the peloton’s ever-larger international reach.

Egan Bernal is poised to dominate the Tour de France unlike any rider in a generation.

• The mild-mannered Colombian has the skills, the temperament, the motor, and the team to potentially reel off one yellow jersey after another. Even Armstrong said Bernal could beat his redacted record of seven Tour titles.
• Egan pedaled into cycling nirvana, breaking the barrier to become the first Latin American to win the Tour de France, and becoming the youngest winner, at 22, since World War II.
• Bernal, is riding to heights unimagined when he joined Team Sky at the start of the 2018 season. Everyone knew he was good, but what he’s been able to realize in the first 18 months of his WorldTour racing career—winning Colombia Oro y Paz and the Amgen Tour of California in 2018, and Paris-Nice, the Tour de Suisse, and the Tour de France in 2019—is beyond words.
• Team Ineos astutely signed Bernal and Sivakov, and counts nine riders who are 24 or younger on its 29-rider roster. Ineos has been on a recruiting campaign the past two years to bolster its aging line of confirmed leaders.
• “At 33, 34, Geraint and Chris are coming to the twilight of their careers,” Brailsford said during the Tour. “I wanted a ‘new’ Chris Froome, basically. So I set myself the challenge of finding him.

Evenepoel ripped through the junior world championships last year, winning both the road race and time trial titles, he catapulted straight to the WorldTour, and bypassed the U23 ranks altogether.

• Something extraordinary happened in the final hour of racing on the twisting roads of northern Spain in early August. Remco Evenepoel, the swashbuckling 19-year-old Belgian phenomenon, rode everyone off his wheel on the final climb at Clásica San Sebastián. Despite a chase from some of the biggest motors in the international peloton, including Olympic champion Greg Van Avermaet and world champion Alejandro Valverde, Evenepoel tearfully crossed the line all alone, more than 30 seconds ahead of the charging group. The victory was as emphatic as it was astonishing. 
• More than a coming-of-age moment, Evenepoel’s victory was a declaration of a new era. 
• “This is exceptional,” said Eddy Merckx. “We know that Remco has a large engine. The fact that he is already showing it proves that he is mature early. He is ready for the big job. Can he follow in my footsteps? Maybe he will even get better. Remco has all the qualities to make it happen.”

Mathieu van der Poel has all the makings of a true international superstar for a new age. The Dutch phenom is so talented he can dominate any discipline he chooses. Perhaps van der Poel’s biggest challenge, much like Sagan’s before him, is to stay engaged and motivated (i.e. to not get bored) with the intensity and demands of performance at the highest level of road racing. 

• That’s one reason why van der Poel, led by his father Adri and backed by a multi-year deal with Canyon bicycles, is creating a multi-discipline platform on which his prodigious son can perform.
• He’s already world champion in cyclocross, and is emerging as a dominant force in mountain biking. (He’s won three of six rounds of the XCO World Cup series.) This spring was just a taste of what lies ahead on the road for van der Poel, but first he’ll target the Olympic gold medal in mountain biking in Tokyo.
• Van der Poel is gleefully embracing the various roots and branches of modern cycling. It’s no longer only about the Tour de France. Performance and greatness can be measured not just in results, but in engagements, in interfacing with fans, and with the pure joy of racing.

Tadej Pogačar, the 2018 l’Avenir winner, became the youngest WorldTour stage-race winner at the age of 20, after coming out on top at the Amgen Tour of California in May.

• Similar to Bernal’s five-year deal with Ineos, Pogačar is under contract with UAE through the end of 2023.
• Perhaps it’s no mistake that Joxean Matxin Fernández, now lead sport director at UAE-Emirates, was a talent scout for Lefevere and Klein Constantia.
• “There have always been good riders coming up,” Fernández said. “The big difference today is that a lot more teams are investing in young riders and in developing talent. Before you had to prove yourself to get a contract. Now teams give riders a chance to grow.”

References:

Velo News, How Remco Evenepoel, Egan Bernal, and other Generation Z riders are changing pro cycling, Andrew Hood, November 19, 2019. 

The Big Picture of Sport News: L'Équipe, Raymond Poulidor, La legende touchante d'un cycliste qui est entré dans le coeur des gens pour toujours

Légende du cyclisme tricolore, Raymond Poulidor n'est pourtant jamais parvenu à remporter le Tour de France, ni même à revêtir le Maillot Jaune. Mais sa popularité auprès du public était au moins équivalente à celle des grands vainqueurs.

• « Poupou » incarnait selon Philippe Brunel le panache à la française. Bien que malchanceux, il était un coureur qui donnait tout sur son vélo. « C'était une popularité compassionnelle », affirme notre journaliste.

L'Équipe, Philippe Brunel : « Raymond Poulidor, sans doute le cycliste le plus populaire de tous les temps », 13 novembre 2019.

Raymond Poulidor était entré dans le coeur des gens. Sur le Tour de France et partout ailleurs, le célèbre octogénaire, obsédé par la peur d'être oublié, faisait revivre leur jeunesse à ses admirateurs. Auréolé de l'un des plus beaux palmarès du cyclisme français, Raymond Poulidor restera pourtant dans la mémoire collective pour sa réputation de poissard.

• Pour notre journaliste Philippe Brunel, Raymond Poulidor, décédé à l'âge de 83 ans, a su retourner en sa faveur ses malheurs sur la route pour entrer dans le coeur des Français.
• Tour de France 1975 : distancé dans les grandes largeurs par Merckx et Thévenet
  Deuxième l'année précédente, Poulidor est hors du coup cette fois-ci. Peut-être rattrapé par le poids des années, à 39 ans, le héros des Français sombre dans les Alpes (ici entre Valloire et Avoriaz), incapable de suivre le rythme des Peugeot emmenés par Thévenet, futur lauréat, ni celui de son coéquipier Zoetemelk (4e à Paris). Relégué à près d'une heure, Poupou établira son plus mauvais classement (19e) en 14 participations. Il prendra sa retraite sportive deux ans plus tard, après un dernier Tour en 1976 (3e).

L'Équipe, Raymond Poulidor : ces moments qui ont construit sa réputation de poissard, 13 Novembre 2019.

L'Équipe, Entré dans le coeur des gens, Raymond Poulidor représentait aussi la jeunesse de ses admirateurs. 13 Novembre 2019.

« Des fois je me pose la question : est-ce que je serais là devant votre micro si j'avais gagné trois Tours de France ? » Voilà comment Raymond Poulidor revenait sur sa carrière juste avant le Tour de France 2019, il y a quelques mois.

• Le Limousin, décédé mercredi à 83 ans, expliquait alors «qu'on l'avait catalogué comme une vedette dès [s]es premières courses. » 

L'Équipe, Quand Raymond Poulidor se confiait avant le Tour de France 2019, Novembre 13 2019.

La carrière de Raymond Poulidor s'est étirée de 1960 à 1977, avec un ultime podium sur le Tour de France décroché à plus de quarante ans.

• 20 ans : la révélation. 
• Voilà trois ans déjà qu'il a remporté sa première course, en mars 1953, le prix de la Quasimodo à Saint-Léonard-de-Noblat. Mais, en 1956, c'est le grand tournant de sa vie. En qualité de meilleur coureur régional, il est invité à participer au fameux Bol d'Or des Monédières, à Chaumeil, un critérium prestigieux disputé en Corrèze où il côtoie les grandes vedettes internationales. 
• « À vingt ans, j'étais aussi fort que cinq ou six ans plus tard. Je pense que j'aurais pu faire le Tour de France sans problème », estimait Poulidor bien des années plus tard. 
• 30 ans : la resignation.
• En 1966, Jacques Anquetil, son grand rival, fait ses adieux au Tour, non sans avoir la certitude que son partenaire Lucien Aimar va l'emporter aux dépens de Poulidor (3e). Le Limousin a déjà manqué l'occasion l'année précédente, lorsqu'il a sous-estimé un jeune champion italien néophyte, Felice Gimondi, qui a remplacé au pied levé un certain Polidori, forfait. 
• « Poupou » a peut-être laissé passer sa chance dans ces années charnières de la trentaine. Après Anquetil, Eddy Merckx va bientôt arriver...
• 40 ans : la continuation.
• Merckx n'est déjà plus Merckx en 1976, mais Poulidor est toujours là. À plus de quarante ans, il va encore monter sur le podium du Tour, troisième derrière Lucien Van Impe et Joop Zoetemelk. « Je sentais que j'étais limité », avoue celui qui réalise quand même une très belle montée du puy de Dôme, douze ans après son coude-à-coude légendaire avec Anquetil. 

L'Équipe, Raymond Poulidor à travers les âges, Novembre 13 2019.

Christian Prudhomme (directeur du Tour de France) : « Ce qu'il remue en moi est très personnel car c'est lui qui m'avait donné l'amour du Tour. Poulidor était le cyclisme. Il réconciliait des générations sur son nom. »

• Il était de cette génération avec (Eddy) Merckx, (Bernard) Thévenet, qui m'a ébloui.
• Poulidor était le cyclisme. Il réconciliait des générations sur son nom, je me souviens que dans la fameuse étape du Mont Revard (gagnée par Guimard) en 1972, il avait attaqué trois fois, et je revois ma mère et ma belle-mère côte à côte, devant la télévision, partager la même admiration. Je m'étais dit, il fait du bien aux gens. 
• Aujourd'hui je veux retenir sa longévité et son humour. Il y a deux ans, à la présentation du Tour, au Palais des Congrès, nous l'avions fait monter sur scène, face au public, avec Merckx, (Bernard) Hinault, (Miguel) Indurain. Il avait dit : « À nous quatre on a gagné quinze Tours de France. » C'était ce même humour. En dépit des années, l'homme n'avait pas changé. »

L'Équipe, Christian Prudhomme : « Poulidor m'a donné l'amour du Tour », Novembre 13 2019.

The Big Picture of Sport: Cycling News, Ewan recalls mental stress of first Tour de France participation

Australian sprinter Caleb Ewan has admitted that he found the stress of his first Tour de France in July difficult to deal with, and that finishing it was "the biggest relief of my life", despite having won three stages.

• Following years of not being selected to ride the Tour de France with Mitchelton-Scott, Lotto Soudal would give Ewan his first shot at riding the race, but the expectation that came with having a team built around him for the world's biggest bike race was far from insignificant, said Ewan.
• "I went into the Tour with a lot of pressure from a lot of different angles," said Ewan, whose wife gave birth to the couple's first child prematurely, with their daughter still in hospital when he had to leave for the race.
• "I'm proud of the way I dealt with that and performed through it, especially when in the first half I hadn't won and obviously I needed to win.
  "I'd gone to the Tour, I'd done well, I'd done well for my new team, my daughter was born and she was all good. There was so much stress, I guess, leading into the Tour; it wasn't healthy, I don't think," said Ewan.

References:

Cycling News, Ewan recalls mental stress of first Tour de France participation, November 11, 2019.

Complementary content:

Velon, Tour de France 2019: Stage 11 highlights, Jul 17, 2019.

Velon, Tour de France 2019: Caleb Ewan's Stage 16 win, July 23, 2019.

Tour de France, Summary - Stage 21 - Tour de France 2019, July 28, 2019.

The Big Picture of Sport News: Cycling, Velo News, The 2020 Tour de France will be won in the ITT, not the climbs

The most defining trends of the modern grand tour – (1) world-class time trialists slimming down to extremely light weights in order to win grand tours or, more rarely, (2) natural climbers honing their TT craft to the point where they don’t lose significant time in the race against the clock.

• The fittest and lightest, grand tour machines with world-class time trial pedigrees like Tom Dumoulin, Geraint Thomas, Chris Froome, and Primož Roglič can ride such a high tempo on climbs that pure climbers are unable to build up significant time gaps on them.
• Climbers like Egan Bernal and Vincenzo Nibali have had to hone their time trialing to limit losses against the clock since the time differences they can pull out on their more favored steep mountain summit finishes is limited.

While the time trial does finish on the brutally steep La Planche des Belle Filles (5.9km at 8.5%), it still provides 30km of flat or rolling roads – longer than the total amount of time-trialing in the 2019 route – for the bigger engines to build up time.

• Even with the inclusion of the finishing climb, the scales should tilt in favor of multi-talented riders like Dumoulin, Roglič, and Thomas (or a healthy Chris Froome) – racers who have proven they can outclimb the pure climbers in upwards-tilting time trials.
• This theory is supported by Roglič’s win at 2019 Giro’s opening stage which finished on the steep climb to Madonna di San Luca in Bologna; Froome and Dumoulin finishing 1st and 2nd at the 2016 Tour de France climbing TT on stage 18; and Dumoulin, Roglič and Froome going 1, 2 and 3 at the 2017 TT World Championships, which finished with a 3.5km climb at an average gradient of 9.1%.
• 2020 may offer Dumoulin the best chance in the last several years, but he will have to create a race-winning difference in those 36km if he wants to be the Tour de France winner.

The argument that adding long time trials will balance the route is simply a myth. Pure time trialists don’t win the Tour de France. Riders don’t win grand tours unless they are superior at both climbing and time trialing. 

• The most ITT-heavy route in the last twenty editions was the 2007 Tour de France, which featured a whopping 117 solo time trial kilometers, won by Alberto Contador, a climbing specialist. Dennis simply doesn’t have the ability to climb with the other quality time trialists like Froome, Dumoulin, and Roglic. A rider like Bernal can limit his losses to Dennis in the time trial to a few minutes and then put 20-plus minutes into him the next day on a difficult mountain stage. In fact, Bernal can be a deceptively strong time trialist: he finished only nineteen seconds behind Dennis in the pancake-flat 19.2km time trial in the 2019 Tour de Suisse.

As we’ve seen in recent years at the Tour de France, top riders struggle to put major time gaps into each other in the mountains. The top GC riders tend to mark each other more closely in the mountains when there are fewer time trial kilometers later in the race where they can make back time.

• For example, on the first major summit finish contested by the GC contenders in the 1998 Tour de France (stage 11), the difference between first and tenth place on the stage was 2:03, in 2013 (stage 8) it was 1:45, in 2018 (stage 11) it was 59 seconds, and in 2019 (stage 14) it was 53 seconds. 

It seems quite possible that ultimate victory will be decided or sealed against the clock on Stage 20.

• Those who want to contend for the 2020 Tour should stay diversified – the climbers would be wise to bank some major hours on their time trial bikes and the time trial specialists shouldn’t necessarily throw in the towel just because there are only 36km of ITT.

References:

Velo News, The Outer Line: The 2020 Tour de France will be won in the ITT, not the climbs, Spencer Martin and Steve Maxwell, November 7, 2019.

Business: Cycling News, Christian Prudhomme, I dream of cycling where the climber distances the rouleur in the mountains and loses time against the clock, but nowadays that doesn’t happen

For the paucity of time trialling, a recent trend that has now been taken to a new level, Prudhomme sympathised with the traditionalists but argued it was a necessary step given smaller and smaller time gaps seen in the mountains compared to the time trials. 

• "I dream of cycling where the climber distances the rouleur in the mountains and loses time against the clock, but nowadays that doesn’t happen." 
• The 2020 route seems an overt attempt to recreate this summer's drama, but he pointed out there's only so much he can do: "It’s the riders who make the race."

The climbing stages are spread throughout the three weeks, with Prudhomme and his colleagues hoping hostilities between the yellow jersey contenders could flare at any moment, rather than being limited to set-piece blocks in the Pyrenees and Alps.

• "The Tour is about the Alps and Pyrenees and always will be. However, in the last few years, we’ve been seeking out difficulties elsewhere," Prudhomme said. 
• "I’m very happy that we have summit finishes in three ranges that aren’t the Alps or Pyrenees. For me, that’s a good thing. We wanted to seek out novelties. These are places that are emblematic, beautiful, and tough, with very steep gradients. We have all the ingredients for a great battle.” 

"We’re not looking to make it harder; we’re looking to make it more varied," Prudhomme said.

• "In that respect, we’re lucky to be starting in Nice – for only the seventh time in 107 editions. When you think of Nice, you think of the sea, but we’re also at the foot of the Alps, and close to all of France’s mountain ranges. So we’re going to start in the Alps, go to the Massif Central, the Cévennes, Pyrenees, back to the Massif Central, the Jura, the Alps again, and the Vosges. The idea was to make it as varied as possible.
• "It’s not that there are fewer stages for the sprinters, but they’re spread out. There are chances for the sprinters in the first week, but never two in a row."

After unveiling a groundbreaking route for the 2020 Tour de France - low on time trialling, high on hills - Christian Prudhomme spoke of the battle to capture the increasingly fleeting attention of the 21st century audience.

• The race director referred to the ‘civilisation de zapping’, a term that comes from the tendency of modern television viewers to restlessly flick through channels, and insisted: "We have to make things as varied as possible."

The new climb at the Col de la Loze, high in the French Alps on a stair-stepping climb that peaks out at 2300m.

“It’s the prototype for the 21st-century mountain we have been looking for,” Tour director Christian Prudhomme said of the climb. “It has a succession of ruptures and breaks with rapidly changing inclines each one worse than the last one. For the pure climbers, it’s a dream come true.”

Col de la Loze - Tour de France 2020

References:

Cycling News, Prudhomme's Tour de France for millennials, Patrick Fletcher, October 16, 2019.