The route for the 2018 Tour de France was officially revealed on Tuesday in Paris, where race director Christian Prudhomme presented a testing first half of the race in the northern France ahead of the mountains of the Alps and Pyrenees in the second and third weeks. The 3229km route includes three summit finishes, a 35km team time trial and a 31km individual time trial spread across the 21 stages. 2017 winner Chris Froome and other big-name riders were in attendance and shared their first impressions of the route. Chris Froome (Team Sky)ADVERTISEMENT It´s still very early to say exactly what we´re up against, but I wouldn´t expect anything different from the organisers. We´ve got a massive challenge for next year, it´s a Tour de France that really tests every aspect of cycling. We´ve got gravel roads, cobbles, a lot of windy dangerous stages in the first half, then obviously we go into the Alps and the Pyrenees for some brutal mountain stages as well. [The flat first week] is going to make the Tour de France very nervous, especially until we reach the Alps and the first summit finishes, it´s going to be a very nervous race. That region, in the north-western part of France is known to be very windy so I´m sure that will play a big part as well I think the queen stage will most probably be Alpe d´Huez, with around 5000m of climbing, so I´m going to say that will be the biggest challenge.
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