Bourgoin Jallieu to Aubenas - Stage 19
A hilly stage travelling south west from Bourgoin Jallieu (twinned with Dunstable, for those keeping track…) to Aubenas through the Ardeche valley.
Ardeche (the region, named after the river) is home of the Chauvet Cave, and it’s paleolithic paintings - unfortunately there’s nothing much as interesting to be said about the start and finish lines of stage 19. Oh, except Aubenas is famous for its chestnuts.
A tough stage to call what with how little time seperates the GC favourites. Normally they would sit back and conserve energy for Mont Ventoux, but they might be in the frame of mind that any time gap is a good time gap.
But what does the expert think?
“If you were designing a stage to produce a fairly large breakaway group it would look like this one, lots of small hills at the start then a long period of flat to re-establish some order, and finally a big hill to decide the winner. The ascent and descent of the last climb will certainly wake up those fighting over the GC places so they had better hope they recovered from the time trial yesterday because everyone else in the race had a easy day with nothing to prove and they’ll be perky for the first hour. Expect to see a large escape group full of Spanish riders.”
