The 2024 Tour de France will include a gravel stage at the end of its first week, local media reports, with the peloton tackling unsurfaced ‘white roads’ around the north-easterly town of Troyes.
The gravel roads around Troyes already featured in the first edition of the revived Tour de France Femmes, back in 2022, with a win for Marlen Reusser (SD Worx).
The inclusion of gravel sections in Grand Tour stages is a question that, like the use of Paris-Roubaix pavé in the Tour de France, invariably sparks a great deal of intense debate, and their presence in the 2024 race would likely prove to be a point of lively discussion over the coming months.
According to L'Est éclair, stage 9 of the 2024 Tour, on Sunday, July 7, is set to start and finish in Troyes after using several sectors of offroad. Full publication of the 2024 Tour de France route is due in three weeks' time, on October 25th in Paris.
The most recent stages featuring in Grand Tours were the 12.4 kilometres of gravel roads that featured in the 2022 Tour de France Femmes stage 4, also in the Troyes region, and the uphill unsurfaced finish at La Planche des Belles Filles in the men’s race in the same year.
Gravel roads of Tuscany also formed part of a stage in the 2021 Giro d’Italia, on a day that saw Remco Evenepoel’s GC bid suffer a major blow.
The opening and closing segments of the three-week course are the only parts set in stone for now, with a Grand Départ in Firenze on June 29 followed by two more stages in Italy, along with two final days based in and around Nice.
That said, the rumours about possible starts and finishes are flourishing fast and furious as the countdown to the big ‘reveal’ in Paris 'Palais de Congrès in a little over three weeks continues.
On the same day, the route of the 2024 Tour de France Femmes will also be unveiled, running from August 12 to August 18. Again, few details are known beyond the Grand Départ in Rotterdam, a double sector stage 2 with a time trial in the afternoon in the same city and three stages in the Netherlands in total.
According to the specialist website velowire, the first week of the race will feature two stages in the Alps with, perhaps, a summit finish on the Croix de Fer. This would be followed by a possible return of the team time trial, according to other sources, on stage 7 in Dijon and the gravel stage in Troyes.
Velowire also reports that week 2 may well then the race turn south through the Massif Centrale, before reaching the city of Pau and possibly tackling two summit finishes in succession in the central and eastern Pyrenees, at St.Lary-Soulan/Pla d’Adet and then Plateau de Beille on stage 15.
Following a rest day in Narbonnes, the Tour will likely make its way along the Mediterranean coastline to Nimes for a four-stage showdown in the Alps, possibly including summit finishes at Isola 2000 and an ascent of one of Europe’s highest tarmacked mountain passes, La Bonette-Restefond. The race would then culminate with an already confirmed finish atop the Col de la Couillele on stage 20 and the hilly, 35-kilometre time trial from Monaco to Nice on stage 21.
