Latest news with #ThierryGouvenou
Wall Street Journal
17-07-2025
- Sport
- Wall Street Journal
It's the Tour de France's Biggest Secret—and There's an Army of Nerds Trying to Uncover It
Hautacam, France Last year's Tour de France had only been over for a couple of weeks when race director Thierry Gouvenou ventured back out on the road.
New York Times
03-07-2025
- Sport
- New York Times
The mastermind behind the Tour de France route: ‘We have to find a little subterfuge'
For over a decade, Thierry Gouvenou's holidays have gone something like this. Driving or cycling through the idyllic French countryside, his mind begins to wander. His family can't get through to him. Gouvenou's eyes are on the road, his thoughts, meanwhile, are lost in its possibilities. 'The mind is always awake,' the 56-year-old says. Advertisement Being the chief course designer for the Tour de France is a constant job. Finding ways to enhance its route is Gouvenou's raison d'être, a former racer turned Tour lifer — this summer's edition will be his 29th as a competitor or official. When he sleeps, he dreams of cols and cobbles. The race is itself an artwork, constructed in part to sell television rights and sponsorship spots on the beauty of the French countryside. There are beaches, vineyards, and the high mountains, sometimes all within a single day. Then there is the sporting element itself, which at times necessitates being someone for everyone — fast and flat run-ins for the sprinters, peloton-splitting climbs for the GC men — but above all, variety for the viewer. These are different times from the Tour's early days. A century ago, the race was almost literally a giant hexagon. Straight lines joined France's major cities in what often amounted to over 400km stages. The route was designed for attrition and practicality, rather than entertainment. Though the need to cover every inch of France was gradually phased out, the 1990s, with Jean-Marie Leblanc as race director, saw the race settle into a more predictable format, made up of multiple formulaic sprint stages at the start of the race, long time trials and then visits to France's two biggest mountain ranges, the Alps and the Pyrenees. But since Leblanc was succeeded by Christian Prudhomme in 2005, there has been a lot more variety in the route design. 'We want to draw stages where the difficulties will alternate,' Gouvenou explains from the Amaury Sport Organisation's (ASO) Paris offices. 'We need to find interest for the public, for the spectators. We will always avoid having three sprint stages in a row. We'd cut it with a time trial, a stage for the puncheurs, the cobbles…' Advertisement This year, the Grande Boucle, or the Big Loop, is as close to its literal meaning as it has been in years. The parcours strides leisurely across northern France, from the Pas-de-Calais coast to the Breton cliffs, before diving down through the country's midriff to the Pyrenees via the Massif Central. From there, after its first prolonged bout of climbing, it races across the south to Mont Ventoux, arguably the most famous climb of them all, before climaxing with three hard days in the Alps. Gouvenou has dispensed with tradition on the final stage as well. Rather than a traditional closed-loop circuit around Paris, this year's route will pass over the climb to Montmartre three times, raising the possibility of some real racing outside the closing sprint. It is no wonder that Gouvenou gets nervous. 'My colleagues know it,' he jokes. 'I am tense, like last year when we rode on the white (gravel) roads. I had two modes — before the white roads and after. We are tense until the final kilometres of any stage, because we're always trying things, we're kind of betting at times. 'What will the weather be? Will it be too hot? Is there a headwind? Any of those things can ruin a stage. There really is constant stress.' This is the life Gouvenou signed up for after finishing his racing career, where he entered the Tour de France seven times between 1994 and 2001, finishing in a highest position of 59th during the troubled tour of 1998. His own career was spent mostly in service of others as a domestique — a role which included being in charge of designing training routes. 'It was me that traced out our paths,' he remembers. 'So it's true that maps were always something that interested me.' On retiring, he decided he did not want to work within a cycling team, but he had taken a qualification in sport business. He applied for a job at the ASO, initially designing smaller races, before replacing Jean-Francois Pecheux as chief designer in 2014. Advertisement In a sense, though his job at the Tour is more complicated, the role is essentially the same as when he planned group rides. Just as his team leader might have said they wanted to summit a certain climb, so too does Gouvenou's boss, general director Prudhomme, make it clear that the Tour must visit a certain place. The details are up to him. 'The real genesis is with Christian, who has chosen the start,' explains Gouvenou. 'That obviously has a big influence on the overall layout of the course. But Christian also has an eye on what he wants to highlight. He likes anniversaries — in 2014, the route marked sites from the First World War. Then, more specifically, obviously there are parts of the Alps and Pyrenees which we return to every year. 'But after that, there are other regions of France that we visit a little less regularly. We aim to visit each of them at least once every five years, though there are no hard rules predefined in advance. Originally, the Tour was around France, but it's now far easier to get to the centre, which means we visit the extremes a little less regularly.' Gouvenou is particularly proud of his work in this area, developing challenging stages around the Vosges, Massif Central, and Jura mountains. He describes the visit to the Vosges at the end of the 2023 Tour — where Thibaut Pinot almost won an emotional farewell victory on home roads, while Tadej Pogacar gained his revenge on Jonas Vingegaard with a stage win — as one of the finest days of his career. 'This kind of stage will motivate you for 10 years,' he says. There is a twinkle in his eyes as he remembers these days. Gouvenou still possesses a racer's mindset and once described in an interview with cycling magazine Rouleur how he wishes 'to find difficulties in every corner of France'. He smiles on hearing those words. 'Previously, we'd have stages which were 200km in a straight line,' he says. 'But we've now really shortened them because we scour the region to look for difficulties. Obviously, that now means we visit fewer regions. 'For example, in Toulouse, we usually always have a big bunch sprint. This year we revised it, there are hills in the final part of the course to try and encourage escapees. We can't offer nine or 10 stages that are completely monotonous. 'So in the 2025 Tour, we might be on the flat plain for 10 days, but by going on the ground myself, I could find interesting things for the puncheurs — at least four or five of them on these 10 stages. Twenty years ago, if we had done the same Tour, we would not have done these things at all.' These trips are a key part of Gouvenou's pre-race process — his year is filled with service stations and motorway dinners. 'It's my 29th Tour de France, so there are lots and lots of roads I know, where I don't have to adapt,' he says. 'But there are some regions where I need to go into the country to see exactly what it looks like — or, if I'm looking for very specific things, I drive my car and hit the roads, having recorded everything that interests me beforehand. I'll work beforehand with Strava, with Google Maps — I have a little overview.' Advertisement His quest to find difficulties does not always leave every competitor happy. Gouvenou will always listen to their suggestions — in the past, climbs have been suggested by members of the peloton — though he remarks that, at the finish line, he is usually introduced to the rider that has won. One regular source of debate is the presence of cobble and gravel stages in the parcours — components which raise the chances of mechanicals, potentially ruining a GC contenders' race. Due to the potential for a rider being punished for conditions outside their control, several high-profile racers have expressed their discontent. 'Last time I checked, we did road cycling,' Simon Yates, the 2025 Giro d'Italia champion, said at last year's Tour. 'You could argue that gravel is also a road, but it's not something that I really enjoy. I think there's a place for it in the sport, you have Paris-Roubaix, you have cyclocross… but I think we should stick to road racing.' 'They'll say: 'Yeah, back in the day… all the roads were cobbles…' and all this stuff, but we're in 2024 now. I think it creates a risk of punctures and crashes for no real reason, but we've got to deal with it.' For Gouvenou, this disruption is part of finding the best overall rider and is part of his contract with the supporters. 'The problem is that teams have become professional and if we can't find real difficulties — either with hills, pavé, or gravel — the stages become monotonous,' he argues. 'They're locked out by the sprint teams, there are no attacks, so you just see a peloton moving. For the sake of the event, for the sake of the viewers, it's not possible to do that. So in regions where we don't have a col, where we don't have a pass, we have to find a little subterfuge.' For similar reasons, Gouvenou is not a fan of time-trials. This year's Tour de France is notably light, with just 44km of TT kilometres, the fourth-fewest in the last 25 years. One of these is not even a traditional TT, with stage 13 comprised of an 11km climb up to Peyragudes. The trend goes across the Grand Tour board — this spring's Giro d'Italia had just 42.3km. 'And I think we still have too many time-trial kilometres,' he laughs. 'You can't feel the race. You see the riders sitting on their bikes and we have the impression of a robot, not a cyclist. Personally, it bothers me to see how technology has taken over the sensation of the shapes. 'Also, in recent years, the gaps in the mountains had been very slim. This has changed a bit with Pogacar and Vingegaard, but having more time-trials before was an opportunity to see different types of gaps.' Advertisement Gouvenou's reference to Pogacar and Vingegaard by name is more evidence of the organisers' ability and willingness to adapt to the riders on the start line. The designer has previously referenced the Team Sky years as forcing him 'outside his comfort zone' due to their ability to control the variables of the route — the presence of super-teams such as UAE Team Emirates and Visma Lease-a-Bike underscore this. 'Eighty to 90 per cent of the course is designed after the previous edition,' he explains. 'For example, this year's stage in Toulouse (stage 11) was redesigned in September after we felt there were too many sprints in the last Tour. 'Right now, I don't know at all about next year's course, not even 60 per cent of the cities. But we're able to react, and that's helped by the fact that there are only a few of us who are making those decisions.' One late adjustment this year came on the final stage, which is traditionally a flat and easy ride through Paris, made up of several short laps before a sprint on the Champs-Élysées. This year, however, organisers were inspired by the inclusion of Montmartre at last summer's Olympic Games and have introduced three loops of the cobbled 1.1km climb. 'In our dreams, or in the dreams of our president, Mr Prudhomme, there was a desire to change the last stage a little bit,' Gouvenou says. 'On the other hand, it is true that we were in a bit of a comfort zone, especially in the city of Paris, where we used to do the Champs-Élysées circuit. It worked well, there was no real questioning. 'But then came the Olympics. That stage at Montmartre struck us all, that was the turning point. We knew it could not be done in the same conditions. On the way, the road is narrow and it's on cobbles, but we do that in Flanders — it's not an issue. But it was necessary to find descents that were much safer than the Olympics. That was the challenge. 'What will the next edition bring? We'll have to see how it goes, but why not come back regularly, maybe in the Olympic years.' The notion of dramatising the set-pieces extends to the Grand Departs, which have begun to conform to a pattern under Gouvenou's stewardship. He has overseen launches in Yorkshire, Utrecht, Dusseldorf, Copenhagen, the Basque Country and Tuscany, amidst the traditional French openings. Conversations constantly arise over whether the Tour could support a Grand Depart on the East Coast of the United States, but Gouvenou is sceptical, raising issues with the logistics, rider welfare, and speculating that the wider roads in the United States may make designing unpredictable stages more challenging. Advertisement 'Personally, I would rather see it finish there,' he considers. 'There's such a significant time difference and it's better for the riders going to the United States rather than back to Europe.' In the meantime, the race will begin in Barcelona next year, before returning to the United Kingdom when it departs from Edinburgh in 2027. 'Every time we have a big departure, we try to have one big stage,' he explains. 'Basically, we want to highlight the riders that will become the GC leaders of the Tour. We're not going to break that rule. 'For example, in the UK, there will be a climb in order to put the leaders forward. It will be an incredible, popular stage. We are waiting impatiently.' (Top photos: Marco Bertorello/Anne-Christine Poujoulat/AFP via Getty Images; design: Eamonn Dalton)
Yahoo
05-02-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
'Hell of the North' remains hellish as Paris-Roubaix organisers add more cobbles
PARIS (AP) — The Hell of the North gets extra cobbles this year. Organizers of Paris-Roubaix, the gruelling cycling classic over cobblestones held in northern France from April 12-13, said on Wednesday they would add two new sections of paving stones. They will be on the road leading to the infamous Trouée d'Arenberg, a long, straight section of cobbles particularly tough to handle. "By introducing them here, it provides us with a sequence of five sectors without virtually any tarmac,' said race director Thierry Gouvenou. Launched in 1896, the Paris-Roubaix is generally filled with punctures, crashes and other drama. It is known in French as the Enfer du Nord — the Hell of the North. The nickname is said to have been coined in 1919 by a journalist to describe the shelled and destroyed World War I wastelands the race picked its way through. It took that year's winner, Henri Pelissier, more than 12 hours to reach Roubaix, more than twice as long as it took last year's male champion Mathieu van der Poel. This year, there will be a total of 30 cobbled sections on the program of the 259.2-kilometer men's race between Compiègne and Roubaix. Organizers also said they had found an alternative to the controversial chicane that was installed for security reasons last year, to reduce the speed of riders leading into the brutal Trouée d'Arenberg. The sharp U-turn had been criticized by some riders, including van der Poel. Gouvenou said the new set up 'allows us to slow down the riders in a more fluid manner, via a small detour that runs alongside the mining site in Arenberg. With this introduction, there will be four right-angle corners in the kilometre before the Trouée d'Arenberg.' The route of the 148.5-kilometer women's race has not been modified. The women's peloton will tackle the last 17 sections of the men's race, totalling 29.2 km of cobbles. ___ More AP cycling: The Associated Press
Associated Press
05-02-2025
- Sport
- Associated Press
‘Hell of the North' remains hellish as Paris-Roubaix organisers add more cobbles
PARIS (AP) — The Hell of the North gets extra cobbles this year. Organizers of Paris-Roubaix, the gruelling cycling classic over cobblestones held in northern France from April 12-13, said on Wednesday they would add two new sections of paving stones. They will be on the road leading to the infamous Trouée d'Arenberg, a long, straight section of cobbles particularly tough to handle. 'By introducing them here, it provides us with a sequence of five sectors without virtually any tarmac,' said race director Thierry Gouvenou. Launched in 1896, the Paris-Roubaix is generally filled with punctures, crashes and other drama. It is known in French as the Enfer du Nord — the Hell of the North. The nickname is said to have been coined in 1919 by a journalist to describe the shelled and destroyed World War I wastelands the race picked its way through. It took that year's winner, Henri Pelissier, more than 12 hours to reach Roubaix, more than twice as long as it took last year's male champion Mathieu van der Poel. This year, there will be a total of 30 cobbled sections on the program of the 259.2-kilometer men's race between Compiègne and Roubaix. Organizers also said they had found an alternative to the controversial chicane that was installed for security reasons last year, to reduce the speed of riders leading into the brutal Trouée d'Arenberg. The sharp U-turn had been criticized by some riders, including van der Poel. Gouvenou said the new set up 'allows us to slow down the riders in a more fluid manner, via a small detour that runs alongside the mining site in Arenberg. With this introduction, there will be four right-angle corners in the kilometre before the Trouée d'Arenberg.' The route of the 148.5-kilometer women's race has not been modified. The women's peloton will tackle the last 17 sections of the men's race, totalling 29.2 km of cobbles. ___
