Stage seven: Saturday July 7, Tomblaine to La Planche des Belles Filles, 199km
After a week begun with gifts to the time trial specialists and the sprinters, the climbers get their first taste of the action on the denouement of a stage just shy of 200km that ends with the first category climb to La Planche des Belles Filles, the final summit in the Vosges range, and the Haute-Saône department’s sole ski resort.
The 5.9km closing climb, one of just two summit finishes this year, is a brute, beginning at 13 per cent, never dropping below 11 per cent, and, after a tantalizing few hundred metres of flat road, rising to 14 per cent in the final kilometre.
Climbers with GC ambitions may see stage seven as an opportunity to stake their claim. With that in mind, this may be the first stage on which we rue the absence of Andy Schleck (RadiosShack-Nissan-Trek) who would surely have been forced to put down a marker here given his weakness in time trials.
Who might we see in his absence? Although sufficiently steep, the climb into Belles Filles is probably too long for the hard men of the Ardennes, ruling out Gilbert (BMC Racing) and in his ilk, who will already have been forced to cope with the 956 metre, category three, Col de Grosse Pierre.
This is a stage that should appeal to Thomas Voeckler (Europcar), but the Frenchman will likely be too closely marked this year to repeat his race-altering breakaway on stage nine of last year’s Tour.
Rabobank’s Robert Gesink may have July 7 circled in his diary. The Dutchman won the Tour of California in May, notably a race without time trials. His Schleck-ian inability against the clock will force him to show his hand on days like these if he is to crack the top five.
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