The Tour de France peloton, deprived of two new riders who tested positive for Covid, set off on Tuesday for the 16th stage marked by the entry into the Pyrenees massif for the first Ariège passes, between Carcassonne and Foix.
Testing positive before the start, the French Mikaël Chérel and Aurélien Paret-Peintre left the Tour, leaving the AG2R Citroën team reduced to just three riders. A total of ten runners have had to abandon the race due to the coronavirus since the start in Copenhagen.
The 178.5 kilometer route, after two short climbs in the first hour, gets tougher from the Vicdessos valley overlooked by the Montcalm dome, the first “3,000 meters” of the chain starting from the Mediterranean.
The ascent of the port of Lers (11.4 km at 7%, 1st category), territory of the bearded vulture, is immediately followed by the ascent of Péguère (9.3 km at 7.9%, 1st category) with the slope impressive of its last three kilometers which include passages at 16-18%.
At the top, there are only 27 kilometers left, often downhill or false flat, to reach the prefecture of Ariège where the finish is judged in the city center as in 2017 during the success of Frenchman Warren Barguil.
Foix (9,600 inhabitants) receives the Tour for the 7th time. During the last visit in 2019, the Briton Simon Yates won ahead of Thibaut Pinot on the heights of Prat d’Albis, above the county city.
The arrival in Foix is ??scheduled around 5:11 p.m. (timetable calculated at an average speed of 39 km/h).
