QUIET ACHIEVER

The Rhône Valley city of Valence, which straddles France’s greatest river on the border of the baked plateaux of the Ardèche and Drôme départements, is a relatively modern addition to the Tour’s itinerary. It only made its first appearance in the Tour in 1996, and the 2021 visit was only its fifth, which is curious because it is perfectly positioned as a waypoint between the Alps and Pyrenees - on a clockwise Tour, it’s an ideal distance for one day’s racing from the Alps, and then you can turn right into the Massif Central or left down the Rhône and into the Languedoc. It’s also the chef-lieu, the departmental capital, so you’d think the Tour would have visited more often, but the city has obviously had a complex relationship with the race.

The Valence stage is hard to define. The last three visits have been bunch sprints, sometimes reduced ones, and the first two were breakaway