Tarbes to Tourmalet Barèges

Stage 14 / Saturday, July 20th

In the last couple of years riders were able to celebrate the culmination of the ITT with a nice relatively easy jaunt to the finish in Paris, but this year it's a one-two punch of a high power drag race followed by a short but daunting trip back to the high mountains. Stage 14 features three category climbs but at only 117 km the fireworks could start from the outset. At the midpoint riders will face the cat 1 Col du Soulor with little time to shake out tired legs before tackling the climb to the summit finish up the famous hors-catégorie Col du Tourmalet the first to crest over 2000 meters at this year's race. At 19 km with an average gradient of 7.4% the climb is undoubtedly difficult, but the last 3 km which hit gradients over 10% are where the climbers will hope to claw back any time lost in the previous days time trial.

At these gradients the equation starts to really favor smaller weight riders especially for short bursts of acceleration. As we look at these sections over 9% in Best Bike Split, for a 71 kg power specialist to match the speed of a 59 kg climber we see that the larger rider must push over 60 watts more power. For short acceleration bursts the larger riders have an even harder time matching the attacks and can easily lose 5+ seconds per 100 meters. If some of the relatively larger riders, even Thomas at 67 kg, can't match the pace on the accelerations and drop power the time losses can easily jump to a minute or more in this last 3km section.