“There won’t be a metre of flat.” This is how Marion Rousse, director of the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift, described stage two of next year’s race, from Manchester to Sheffield, at the announcement on Monday. “This will be a battle. This second stage will be hard fought with some spectacular climbs.”
Judging by what we know so far about day two of the British Grand Départ next summer, this might not be hyperbole. The 154.4km stage will have around 2,750m of climbing in it, including ascents of Winnats Pass (1.4km at 12.3%) and Snake Pass (5.4km at 4.6%), before a finish in Sheffield similar to stage two of the men’s race in 2014, with the Côte d’Oughtibridge (1.5km at 9.1%) and the Côte de Jenkin Road (0.8km at 10.8%) on the menu.
News editor at Cycling Weekly, Adam brings his weekly opinion on the goings on at the upper echelons of our sport. This piece is part of The Leadout, a newsletter series from Cycling Weekly and Cyclingnews. To get this in your inbox, subscribe here. As ever, email adam.becket@futurenet.com – should you wish to add anything, or suggest a topic.
Only the Mont Ventoux stage of this summer’s Tour de France Femmes has more climbing than the planned stage two for next summer, and just the two final Alpine stages of last year’s race were hillier, too. The Giro d’Italia Women next month has just two stages with more climbing, and To put it into context further, this weekend’s Liège-Bastogne-Liège, the hilliest of the Monuments raced by women, has just under 2,700m of climbing over 156km. On stage two of next year’s Tour, the best riders in the world will ride the equivalent of a climber’s Classic, with seven stages still ahead of them.
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Sandwiched between a likely opening day bunch sprint and stage three’s time trial, British fans couldn’t ask for much more excitement, or a variety of different stages, over the Tour’s English odyssey. There is a chance that whoever leaves Yorkshire with the yellow jersey could win the whole thing, as happened with Vincenzo Nibali in the men’s race in 2014.
Opening stages of the race have not been like this in the race’s short history, with only stage two of the 2023 edition offering anything vaguely similar – Liane Lippert won, on what turned out not to be a GC day.
There is no guarantee that the race will be set alight in the Peak District, anything 15 months out is really just idle speculation, but stage two certainly has must-watch written all over it, or “be attentive and reactive” if you are one of the select few hoping to win the race overall next summer.
It is important to remember that despite all our pre-race analysis it is up to the riders to decide how to race it. These climbs might seem hellish to us on the profile, or in reality, but these professional riders could decide to roll up them, without getting too out of breath. I’ve cycled up Snake Pass, and it wasn’t terrible – traffic aside – but then I was going about a third of the speed the peloton will ride it at, and they might find it not terrible too.
It can’t be denied, however, that on paper, this looks like a brutal day on the bike, a point of difference for the 2027 race. It won’t be in the organisers’ interests for the race to be blown apart too early, so it will be interesting to see what is in store for the peloton on the other side of the channel. If someone does want to surge forward into history, though, they will have the terrain to do it on.
This piece is part of The Leadout, the offering of newsletters from Cycling Weekly and Cyclingnews. To get this in your inbox, subscribe here.
If you want to get in touch with Adam, email adam.becket@futurenet.com.
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