Unrecognizable Tour de France. Next year will bring huge changes

The organizers have completely overhauled the concept of the Old Lady, the most famous three-week race in the world.

They drastically reduced the time trial kilometers. They wanted to adapt to the new conditions, the young predatory riders, and therefore tried to make it more exciting, more dramatic until the last kilometers. Whether they succeed or whether it’s all just a big miss will be seen next year.

The old-timers despair and say that the French must have gone mad. After all, time trials have always been the spice of all Grand Tours. They showed who is the most versatile rider on the planet. The Belgians are furious that this will severely damage the chances of their favourite, Remko Evenepoel, if he wants to take part in the race. Others are eager to see what the new racing philosophy will bring.

Tour 2023 will bring to a minimum trimmed time trial kilometers and a large number of categorized climbs. However, they are different than before. They include much less of the classic long tempo mountain rides.

The main thing is absolutely obvious. The classic time trial is missing. The only one left is mountain and only 22 km long. There have never been so few time trial kilometers. For the entire 89 years, when time trials were included in the race itinerary for the first time (in 1934).

Why so little? Time trials, where riders start at intervals one after the other, are boring, said race director Christian Prudhomme, in other words, when he presented the Tour 2023 route at the Palais des Congrès in Paris. According to him, time trials paradoxically do not work in the modern age of versatility.

Those who have followed Prudhomme since he took over in 2007 have to admit that the Frenchman is quite consistent in his quest to cut time trial kilometers. In the aforementioned 2007, the Tour offered 117 km of individual time trials. After that, the kilometers decreased, with exceptions. In 2017 it was 37 km against time, a year later 31 km and in 2019 only 27 km. In the last two years, it has risen again over 50 km, but next year time trial specialists like Ganna, Dennis, Küng or Bissegger will be out of luck.

But last year’s Tour showed that the two best time trialists were also the two best climbers. In addition, Remco Evenepoel himself showed now at the Vuelta how strong he is in the hills.

Until now, the defense of the time trial has been that it creates differences between the competitors, and they then try to reverse them at all costs. The Tour without time trials could theoretically become a tight waiting game, where the race boils down to one key moment and possibly bonus seconds.

The other change is the hills. No, don’t worry, the hills will remain and there will be almost more of them than usual – 30 categorized climbs. But they look different than before. There won’t be many that could be called traditional alpine trips.

There is an obvious pressure from the organizing agency ASO to eliminate performance meters as much as possible for the riders and their teams and thus predict the development of the final kilometers of the mountain stages. “With a constant smooth climb, riders can count their watts and check their effort,” said technical director Thierry Gouvenou. “We’re looking for ways to break up the peloton.”

In the Alps, riders will encounter a notable lack of typical ski resort roads, which climb a steady 6-7%. The gradient of such a Col de Joux Plane is constantly changing, rising and falling, and even so it has an average of almost 9%.

And what about the royal hill of the Tour 2023 Col de la Loze (2,304 m). With its inconsistent gradients and sections approaching 20%, the Col de la Loze is a terrifying climb that will strike fear into even the most talented climbers. The closer to the top, the steeper and narrower it is.

The thirteen-kilometer Puy de Dome (1,415 m) starts at 6.6 to 7.7% at the end of the first week. Then the climb eases for three kilometers to jump up to 12.2% for the last 4.5km.

The riders can’t even expect a calm, flat start to the Tour. The very first stages in the Basque Country will test the climbing skills of the peloton. The second to San Sebastian reminds a little of the famous classic of the same name.

Next year’s Tour de France will thus enter untested territory. Only the race itself will show whether the intentions of the organizers will meet expectations. Bring more tension, unexpected twists and turns to the race. Just to keep the audience from getting bored.