tuesday 01 January 2019 at 17h29
As usual, we'll have to wait until June before we get to know all the details about the race route of the different stages of the Tour de France 2019. Well, that is .. not for all of them, because the race route of the two stages which make up the Grand Départ of the 106th Tour, in Brussels in Belgium, is already known now!
You might have beebn waiting for it since the official announcement of the Tour de France 2019 stages, the maps with the detailed race route of the first Tour de France 2019 stages are finally available here!
The Grand Départ of the Tour de France 2019
Brussels, in Belgium, will receive the Grand Départ of the Tour de France for the 2nd time in 2019, after 1958, and it'll thus be the 11th time that the Tour visits the Belgian capital.The programme of the Grand Départ is as follows:
- Wednesday 3 July 2019: opening of the press center and the permanence in Brussels Expo
- Thursday 4 July 2019: Tour de France 2019 teams presentation on the Grand-Place, where Eddy Merckx saw an audience which didn't fit on the caracteristic place of the European capital, in 1969 after his first out of 5 overall victories in the history of the Tour
- Saturday 6 July 2019 : 1st stage - Brussels > Charleroi > Brussels
- Sunday 7 July 2019 : 2nd stage - Brussels > Brussels - team time trial between the Palais Royal and the Atomium
The Grand Départ race route of the Tour de France 2019 on Open Street Maps
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Why Open Street Maps?
As you know, velowire.com usually published its maps of the different cycling races on a Google Maps background. Because we were used to, because the map background is so easy to recognise for most people who use it almost every day, because of the ease of use of this solution and because of its performance .. the question never came up to switch to another provider for the map background.Google however decided to mess up things by setting up a paid version above a certain level of usage. Due to the popularity of the maps of cycling races on velowire.com, this would have represented quite a big cost for a website which you are using for free (for the Tour de France 2017 it was still possible to use it for free, thanks to a welcome bonus offered by Google, but that's now gone). It was thus time to find another solution.
After having tried the "Géoservices" solutions by IGN, the choice was finally made for Open Street Maps. Indeed, the map backgrounds provided by IGN were not completely satisfactory, the interface was less easy to use and the implementation was also a bit more complex and less flexible than the one recommended by Open Street Maps for this use.
1/ Saturday 6 July 2019 - Brussels (BE) > Charleroi > Brussels (BE) - 192 km
Furthermore, the riders will find on their route during this stage the Mur de Grammont at km 43, before they go further south down to Charleroi get on a cobbled stones section, to the intermediate sprint in Les Bons Villers and at the foot of the Butte du Lion (the fatal battle field for the troops of Napoleon in Waterloo) before they go back north towards Brussels where the finish will take place in the Avenue du Parc Royal.
You'll find hereunder the map with the race route of the first stage of the Tour de France 2019 and the stage profile. Click on the images to open them.
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2/ Sunday 7 July 2019 - Brussels (BE) > Brussels (BE) - team time trial - 27 km
While the stage victory the previous day most probably goes to a sprinter, who will thus have the occasion to wear the first yellow jersey of this year in which we celebrate its 100 years of existance, it is well possible that the leader's jersey for the general classification goes on to a new rider after this second stage if that sprinter is not part of a team which excels in team trialing and which can win this timed race.
You'll find hereunder the map with the race route of the second stage of the Tour de France 2019 and the stage profile. Click on the images to open them.
The Tour de France 2019 Grand Depart's race route in Google Earth
Even though the maps no longer have a Google Maps background but now use a Open Street Maps background, you can still have a look at them in Google Earth. Would you like to do a virtual fly-over of the race route of the Grand Départ stages of this 106th edition of the Tour de France? That's possible, by downloading the following KML file and opening it with Google Earth!
WARNING - copyright: despite the fact that this KML is provided here for your own use, please keep in mind that it's strictly forbidden to reproduce the contents of this KML file or of any other file (including the maps, the profiles, the KML files and others) which make up the race route of the Tour de France 2019. These contents are indeed protected by copyright and I thus ask you to respect the important amount of time taken to create these. This protection concerns the reproduction of the maps and other elements in any form (as maps, fly-over videos or any other creation based on the contents provided by velowire.com).>> Download the race route of the two Grand Départ stages of the Tour de France 2019 in Google Earth
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this publication is published in: Tour de France | Tour de France 2019 | OpenStreetMap/Google Maps/Google Earth
by JP over