Stage 2

A dash around Romain Bardet’s training roads. The Col de Saint-Thomas midway is harder than the stats suggest with a final kilometre at 12% but it’s hardly going to turn the race upside down. A summit finish? The Col de la Loge ticks lots of boxes as it’s at a mountain pass, it’s over 1,000m high, the upper part is flanked by pine trees, there’s a ski station at the top and yet the missing ingredient is a tough gradient. It’s a scenic road all the way up from the Loire valley floor but never that steep and while the profile doesn’t show it there are some flat sections after the Croix de Ladret and it flattens out again right at the finish. It makes for a hard final 30km that no heavyset sprinter can cope with but it’s for strong riders who can surf slipstreams and bully the big ring.