Stage nine of the Tour de France features 32km on the white roads of the Champagne region. Steve Shrubsall grabs his gravel bike to sample what lies in wait for the peloton
Being the Tour de France race director must give Christian Prudhomme more than a few restless nights. In the small hours of a September morning – weeks before the following year’s route is announced to a clamouring crowd of riders, journalists and boulangerie proprietors – I imagine a panic-stricken Prudhomme coming to from a nightmare featuring the same old mountains and TT kilometres as the previous dozen editions. For a Tour de France to be heralded a success, a more eclectic set of stages is needed – France needs to be well and truly toured. As many stones as possible need to be turned. And for this year’s route, the race director had a bona fide eureka moment.
GRAPPLING WITH GRAVEL
Our destination: the rolling Champagne region, where this year’s stage nine, on 7 July, will start and finish in the town of Troyes. Conjured in a moment of genius, Prudhomme and the Tour’s lead course designer, Thierry Gouvenou, inserted 14 gravel sectors covering 32km of the 199km stage. A brilliant move, unless you’re Remco Evenepoel who was frankly disgusted with the idea of including the chemins blancs in the 2024 Tour.
OK, I’m not suggesting that the race director woke up one day screaming ‘GRAVEL!’ at the top of his lungs – but for the purposes of this feature, let’s run with it – because as an explanation of one particular stage, it fits the parcours perfectly. Barely out of his pyjamas, then, and long before the boulangerie proprietors, half of the pro peloton and a cluster of journalists had the chance to enquire as to what on earth he was raving about, stage nine of this year’s Tour had been signed, sealed and delivered. Fast-forward to mid-May 2024 and our CW team – me, my brother James and photographer Richard – were en route to find out for ourselves just what wild vision entered Prudhomme’s mind that fateful night.
The weather in the few days prior to our visit was hot and sunny – wallto-wall sunshine in Troyes with afternoon highs of 24ºC. Perfect. But after clicking the little arrow on the BBC Weather app that allows you to embark on a little time travel, we were regrettably informed that on the day of our arrival, and throughout our time there, the temperature would drop by some 10ºC, the wind would pick up and, of course, it would rain. Oh, for the love of gravel…
After our first night in the Champagne region, we breakfasted on that classic Continental melange of meat, cheese and bread before heading to the start of the course just a few clicks out of
