An Early Look at Stages 1 and 2 of the 2020 Tour de France

The Tour de France ended on July 28, and if you watched all of the final podium ceremony, you may have seen four dignitaries (including Belgian legend Eddy Merckx) exchanging handshakes and trinkets toward the end. That marked the official “handing over” of the Tour from Brussels, Belgium, which hosted the Grand Départ this year, to the French city of Nice, which will host stages 1 and 2 during the race’s opening weekend in 2020.

Both days will start and finish in the city center, with circuits giving fans several opportunities to see the action.

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Stage 1 of the 2020 Tour will make things tough for the usual crop of sprinters.

Stage 1 (170K) covers three laps of a hilly 50K loop, with an extra flat 20K tacked on the end. While the press release clearly frames it as a day for the sprinters, we’re not so sure. Nice is surrounded by hills and narrow, winding roads, so teams will have some difficulty controlling the stage. Even with about 40K of downhill and flat roads from the top of the final climb to the finish, the stage still features more than 1,600 meters of elevation gain. That’s a lot of climbing for a sprinter hoping to reach the end and still have enough left in his legs to win a field sprint.

If Stage 1 does end in a sprint, it could see a smaller peloton fighting for victory on the famous Promenade des Anglais, with classics stars like Peter Sagan, Michael Matthews, and Wout van Aert having a better chance than guys like Caleb Ewan, Elia Viviani, and Dylan Groenewegen.

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Stage 2 has three categorized climbs in the Alps, bringing the kind of climbing we often see later in the Tour.

Stage 2 is longer (190K) and much harder, with three categorized climbs and about 3,700 meters of climbing. Starting in downtown Nice, it heads north into the Maritime Alps and over the day’s two biggest climbs: the Col de Colmiane (16.3K at 6.2 percent gradient) and the Col de Turini (14.9K at 7.3 percent). These are serious Alpine ascents, the likes of which we don’t usually see until much later in the Tour.

After summiting the Turini, the stage turns south and takes two passes over the Col d’Eze, a climb that serves as the traditional finale of Paris–Nice. The first climb takes riders all the way to the summit before plunging back down to Nice, through the finish line, and onto the day’s final circuit. The last lap doesn’t go all the way to the top, but it still covers the Eze’s hardest slopes before a short, technical descent back to the Promenade des Anglais. There the stage winner, and most likely a new overall leader, will be crowned.

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Stage 2 of the 2020 Tour will tackle some of the same territoty as Paris–Nice, a week-long stage race in the spring.

Stage 2 is perhaps the hardest opening weekend stage of the Tour’s modern era. While it’s tempting to say that it could easily turn into a GC battleground, it comes too early in the race to expect riders like 2019 champion Egan Bernal to try for anything beyond making it through the day unscathed.

Instead, look for riders like Simon Yates, Tim Wellens, Dylan Teuns—all of whom have strong track records at Paris–Nice—to perform well, using the hard finale to make their winning attack.

If there’s one rider really licking his lips at the 2020 Grand Départ, we’d guess it’s Julian Alaphilippe. A true puncheur, the Frenchman thrives on hilly, technical courses and could easily end the weekend wearing the yellow jersey. That’s one stage earlier than when he took it in 2019, before he now-famously defended it for 14 total days as a dark-horse contender for the overall win (and only lost it to Bernal on the third-to-last stage).

We can’t remember feeling more excited—or intrigued—by a Tour de France opening weekend.