L’ Étape du Tour

This bucket-lister for keen cyclists allows you to play, for a day, at being in the real Tour de France

This mass-participation cycling event may not have invented the genre, but thanks to its association with the Tour de France, it certainly has the most clout, with a crossover name recognition that other cycling events can but dream of. Its concept is simple. Amateurs mimic a mountain stage of that summer’s Tour de France, these days on a closed-road route. The most recent event (which, at time of writing, was last summer), saw 11,500 finishers from 16,000 registrations and 92 nationalities represented, riding through the Alps from Annemasse to Morzine. If you wind back to the first L’Étape du Tour in 1993, however, you’ll find a modest event of 1,705 riders on a cold, misty morning in the Pyrenees. The 190km route from Tarbes to Pau crossed giants including the Tourmalet…

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Cycling Plus (Digital) - 1 Issue, August 2024

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