Cycling: Astana Manager comments new Tour de France route

According to Giuseppe Martinelli, Kazakhstan's Astana cycling team manager, the route of the jubilee Tour de France race will be much more difficult than the one of the previous race. Tour de France, the trade's most prestigious race, will be held for the one hundredth time this year, Vesti.kz reports. “It is expected that the 100th Tour de France race will be more difficult, than the 2012 Tour de France race. However, it would still be easier than the races I took part in long ago. It looks like many of the contemporary races. The organizers usually arrange the route to make sure everyone is happy. There are stages for sprinters, for mountain cyclists, there is also team racing that is very spectacular and there are several stages of individual races,” Martinelli said. According to Astana team manager, the new route won’t give much advantage to individual time trial racer the way the last Tour de France did. But it won’t accommodate the mountain cyclists either as did the last Vuelta race. “This is a route for general cyclists, who are ready for all types of races,” he said. The race will kick off on June 29 in Corsica, from the city of Porto-Vecchio and will finish 3479 kilometers later at the Champs Elysees on July 21. Tour de France participants will compete for 23 days. There will be seven flat stages, five hilly stages, six mountain stages (with four summit finishes), two individual time trial stages and one team time trial stage. The race will include two days of rest.