Tour de France Stage 6 Preview: The Col du Tourmalet Awaits

Two big Pyrénéean climbs are in store, but they come mid-stage leaving 40km after the Tourmalet summit to duel it out.

Pau – Gavarnie-Gèdre: 186.2km / 4,100m

The Col d’Aspin. The Col du Tourmalet. The Tour de France wouldn’t be the same without these Pyrénéan brutes.

They’ve been crushing quads almost every year since 1910, the year the peloton first entered the Pyrénées in a notorious course known as the “circle of death.”

However, like stage 3 to Les Angles, stage 6 over the Aspin and Tourmalet could be considered fake news.

It traverses Cols, but the finale won’t feel like a mountain stage.

The summit of the Tourmalet arrives 40km from the finish before a dragging false-flat grind to Gavarnie-Gèdre. Expect a select group to go to the line in an 18km finale that’s not a climb, but certainly not flat.

Will a GC contender strike for victory? That might be decided by how the breakaway fares on the Tourmalet.