After Laurent Jalabert and ONCE blew the Tour de France apart on the road to Mende in 1995, race director Jean-Marie Leblanc peppered the following year's route with a slew of punchy stages in the Massif Central, reasoning that this terrain would prove amenable to Jalabert and those trying to end Miguel Indurain's long reign as patron.
Instead, the succession of hilly stages in the second week of the 1996 Tour provided little by way of separation among the favourites, who bided their time for the Pyrenees. Jalabert, stricken by illness, had already gone home in the Alps. Indurain would go on to lose that Tour, but because of hitherto unseen weakness in the high mountains rather than any grand offensive in the moyenne montagne.
The Tour's forays into the medium mountains always promise much, but so much depends on the overall context of the race. The rolling road to Saint-Étienne on stage 8 and the rugged terrain near Brioude the following day offer plenty of springboards for inventive GC riders, but it remains to be seen if they will look to avail of them. It's a question of motivation, and at this early juncture in the Tour, many might reason that they have more to lose than to gain by expending energy here.
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"It's a bit early in the game for grand offensives," AG2R La Mondiale directeur sportif Julien Jurdie told Cyclingnews in Belfort on Friday, though with Romain Bardet already more than two minutes down on Geraint Thomas (Team Ineos), one wonders if his team might be entertaining the idea.
In 2017, after all, AG2R looked to put Sky on the back foot with a stint of forcing on the road to Le-Puy-en-Velay, while this Sunday's stage finish is in Bardet's hometown of Brioude – and on Bastille Day, to boot. Jurdie, however, believes that caution will be the order of the weekend for the podium contenders here, with the Pyrenees, Alps and the Tour's lone individual time trial still to come in the second half of the race.
"Saturday's stage in particular is dangerous," said Jurdie, a native of Saint-Étienne. "You'll have to be very prudent because things could happen, so all of the contenders will have to be very vigilant."
4,000 metres of climbing on the road to Saint-Étienne
A kind of homecoming for Bardet
You can read more at Cyclingnews.com
via Cyclingnews Latest Interviews and Features http://www.cyclingnews.com/features/a-weekend-of-possibilities-as-tour-de-france-hits-massif-central
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