📸 Top riders recon Tour de France queen stage — Evenepoel analyzes grueling final climb: "Finishing here is never easy"

On the Courchevel Sports Outdoor Instagram account, several professional teams were spotted this week on the infamous climb in the French Alps. The first rider to be spotted about a week ago was Primoz Roglic (Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe). The Slovenian rode to the top alone. Alpecin-Deceuninck riders Kaden Groves, Xandro Meurisse, and Gianni Vermeersch were also captured on camera.

Visma | Lease a Bike passed just before the top with several riders. The Dutch team will start the Tour de France with a particularly strong line-up led by Jonas Vingegaard. In Tignes, the Dane is working on the last few percent of his top form, accompanied by Wout van Aert, Sepp Kuss, Giro winner Simon Yates, Edoardo Affini, Victor Campenaerts, and Matteo Jorgenson. The eighth and final rider in the Tour squad was missing during the recon: Ties Benoot. The Flemish rider already explained to this website during the Tour of Switzerland why he will not be present during the final altitude training camp before the Tour.

Remco Evenepoel was also spotted on the long climb. With his teammates from Soudal Quick-Step, Maximilian Schachmann, and Valentin Paret-Peintre, the Flemish rider explored the grueling final climb less than two weeks before the start of the Tour de France. During the queen stage on day 18, the Tour peloton will have to tackle an absurd number of altitude meters: 5,500, spread over the Glandon, Madeleine, and Col de Loze.

The Col de Loze has a gradient of 6.5%, with steeper sections and a summit at 2,300 meters. “It's a tough climb, very irregular too,” Evenepoel analyzes the climb in a video. “I also believe it's the longest of the entire Tour. With the Col du Glandon and the Col de la Madeleine first, it will be a beautiful but difficult ride.”

“Finishing here is never easy, and it's the first time we're climbing from Courchevel,” Evenepoel continues his analysis of the difficult stage in the third and final week of the Tour de France. “I think it will be a pretty tough stage with the Glandon and the Madeleine. It won't be easy, but it will be a great stage.”