As usual at the end of December (this article was published in French and Dutch on the 31st), velowire.com allows you to discover the Paris-Nice race route based on rumours. The same goes for the 2012 route.

This year, several other websites got ahead of us, but they often didn't mention the sources and thus left a big doubt on the reliability of the information. Certain websites are specialised in copying and pasting informations without mentioning the source, but for me it's not only something I would like to stick to but it also allows you to verify the information I published when I mention the sources!

In this article you'll find, until the official announcement, the latest rumours about the Paris-Nice 2012 race route, thanks to updates which will follow.

What's for sure

Officially, the only thing we know about Paris-Nice 2012, the 70th edition of the race to the sun, are the dates: the race will take place from 4 till 11 March 2012, as you can see on the the page dedicated to Paris-Nice 2012 in the interactive UCI cycling calendar. Paris-Nice will thus, as usual, be the second race of the UCI WorldTour in 2012.

The only other official information is that the race will again start in the Yvelines department since this department has signed a contract with Amaury Sport Organisation (ASO), the organising company of the race (which also organises the Tour de France and several other cycling races in the world), which covers several years.

All other information is only rumours ... more or less verified rumours ...

1/ Sunday 4 March 2012 - Dampierre-en-Yvelines > Saint-Rémy-lès-Chevreuse - 9.2 km

The first stage will take place as an individual time trial, but despite that we cannot talk about prologue because it will be 9.2 kilometers long.

Indeed, the first rumours about this stage were given by the October 2011 (!) magazine of the Yvelines department. On page 41 of the magazine we read that the prologue will take place between Dampierre and Chevreuse on Saturday 3 March 2012. Of course, we know better, because Paris-Nice will not start on Saturday the 3rd but on Sunday the 4th of March 2012. In its agenda, the department mentions the dates of 3, 4 and 5 March 2012 and with the pre-start activities organised for the local people, these dates are most probably correct.

On the website of the city Saint-Rémy-lès-Chevreuse we find a little bit more details, including the place where the time trial will start, in front of the castle of Dampierre-en-Yvelines, while the finish will be in front of the RER train station of Saint-Rémy (and thus not in Chevreuse but in Saint-Rémy-lès-Chevreuse). The finish city furthermore indicates the race route which will mostly follow a part of my training routes by taking the Côte des 17 tournants (a short climb which, according to the data on my Garmin is about 1.3 kilometers long for a height difference of about 80 meters and which thus has an average slope of 6.2%) and by going through Chevreuse.

Still according to this website, several activities will be organised on the parking place of the Stade Guy de Coubertin while the press room will be at the Espace Jean Racine.

With all this, this would mean that this stage would look similar to what's shown below (click on the images of the profile and the map of the stage to open them):

1/ Dampierre-en-Yvelines > Saint-Rémy-lès-Chevreuse

[X] Close

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2/ Monday 5 March 2012 - Mantes-la-Jolie > Orléans - 185 km

Still according to the October magazine of the Yvelines, the stage start will be in Mantes-la-Jolie the next day. This will be the start of the 2nd stage, on Monday 5 March 2012, and this stage will go towards Orléans. Indeed, in May 2011 already, France 3 announced a stage finish in the capital city of the Centre region and when you look at a map and you want to have a logical flow of the stages, you see that this can only be for this stage.

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3/ Tuesday 6 March 2012 - Vierzon > Le Lac de Vassivière - 194 km

For the stage start from Vierzon for this stage, the information was already available on 4 October and was mentioned in my article on the rumours of the Tour de France race route. This information came from the La Montagne newspaper (the article has unfortunately never been published online). More recently, on 24 November, Le Petit Berrichon again confirmed this information and even mentioned a possible future Tour de France stage, more probably in 2014 than in 2013, with a Bourges > Vierzon time trial??

The finish close to the Lac de Vassivière had also been mentioned already early October, at that time first as a rumour for the Tour de France 2012, but on the same day France 3 Limousin published the information about the Paris-Nice stage finish, apparently only seconds after the meeting between the people from ASO with Stéphane Cambou representing Vassivière!

According to France 3 and La Montagne this stage would go through Guéret and Bourganeuf.

UPDATE 25 January 2012: on 19 January, La Nouvelle République provided some further information about the race route of this stage by announcing 80 kilometers in the Indre department. The article was pretty much talking around the most important information (indeed in a newspaper you can hardly simply publish only a map and say "that's all"), but the most important information of the article was as follows:
- start in Vierzon at 11.35AM
- entrance of the Indre department in Reuilly around 12.05 and coming through Diou, Sainte-Lizaigne, Issoudun, Vouillon, Sassierges-Saint-Germain, Ardentes, Jeu-les-Bois, Buxières-d'Aillac, Le Fay, Cluis and Aigurande (feeding zone)
- from there, the stage will come through Dun-le-Palestel (which La Nouvelle République mistakenly calls Dun-le-Pastel), Le Grand-Bourg, Aulon, Saint-Dizier-Leyrenne, Bourganeuf, Peyrat-le-Château and finally the finish at the Lac de Vassivière between 4.09PM and 4.36PM

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4/ Wednesday 7 March 2012 - Brive-la-Gaillarde > Rodez - 183 km

Still according to La Montagne, the start of this stage would be in Brive-la-Gaillarde and this information has been confirmed at the end of November by Midi Libre which also said that the stage would finish in Rodez. La Dépêche also published this information on 17 December.

In the city's magazine of December 2011, Rodez confirmed that it will receive Paris-Nice in 2012 and this can also be read in the summary of the Conseil Municipal meeting on 16 December which confirmed the finish in Rodez on 7 March and the start from Onet-le-Château on 8 March. The summary also confirmed the riders will be coming from Brive and heading to Mende in stage 5.

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5/ Thursday 8 March 2012 - Onet-le-Château > Mende - 178 km

In the same article of the Midi Libre we found information about the 5th stage of Paris-Nice 2012, between Onet-le-Château (at only 6.9 kilometers from Rodez where the previous stage will finish) and Mende.

Concerning the finish in Mende, the city confirmed the information on 8 December on it's official website but didn't give any further details. For example, the city doesn't say whether the finish will again be on top of the famous montée Laurent Jalabert (côte de la Croix Neuve) like in 2007 and 2010 or not ...

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6/ Friday 9 March 2012 - Suze-la-Rousse > Sisteron - 176,5 km

The start of this stage seems to be quite far away (about 3 hours by car), in Suze-la-Rousse, if we must believe Le Dauphiné Libéré which published the information in two stages ("the organiser has contacted ..." and than the confirmation) before re-visiting this information in an article just before Christmas.

This information has been confirmed by the summary of the Conseil Municipal meeting of 24 November 2011 during which the budget of 17,000€ has been voted.

According to the La Provence newspaper in November, this stage will finish in Sisteron. This article has since disappeared from the La Provence website, but the information comes back in an article which was published on 18 December following the official vote of the corresponding budget.

Indeed, in the summary of the Conseil Municipal meeting on 15 December 2011 we read the confirmation of the finish on 9 March and of the stage start on 10 March.

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7/ Saturday 10 March 2012 - Sisteron > Nice ??? - 220 km

La Provence also announced that Sisteron will not only have a stage finish but will also be a start location of the 70th edition of Paris-Nice but no one has provided any information about the finish city of this stage. If the rumours about the next stage turn out to be right, this stage could well go directly towards Nice and its Promenade des Anglais.

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8/ Sunday 11 March 2012 - ITT Nice > Col d'Eze ??? - 9,6 km

Indeed, usually the last stage starts and finishes in Nice on the Boulevard des Anglais.

According to Cyclism'Actu however, this year it could be a mountain time trial, on the col d'Èze to be precise. Even though they don't give any information about the source of their "information", this could turn out to be right because that used to be the final of Paris-Nice from 1968 till 1995 (except for 1977), as a stage finish for a stage in line however (as far as I know). In 2001, the forelast stage was a time trial between Nice and the Col d'Eze over a distance of 10 kilometers, which was won by Dario Frigo who also took the overall classification.

If this rumour turns out to be right, this will for ASO be a trade-off between suspense until the end of the race to the sun from a sports perspective and the number of spectators who will be present at the finish, because there won't be many who will go up to the top of the Col d'Eze.

There still remains a big doubt though because in the summaries of the Conseil Municipal meetings of the city of Eze this topic has never been discussed!!! It can however be handled within the Communauté urbaine structure but this unfortunately doesn't publish the summaries of it's meetings ...

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The confirmation from ASO, the same mistake as for the Tour de France 2012

UPDATE 25 January 2012: You most probably remember the mistake ASO made for the Tour de France 2012 when its IT supplier published the race route (which publication was ongoing as a preparation of the official presentation) on the official website of the race a few days before the official presentation.

We could have thought that ASO learned from that mistake and that such a thing could never happen again. Apparently however, the necessary evolutions (simply using a content managament system which manages date and time of publication and which allows to preview content to be published in a private area) have not been applied to the website since October and in the same way as for the Tour, ASO thus again reveals on its website the race route of Paris-Nice 2012 a few days before the official presentation.

These informations completely confirm everything which has been said above, including the finish of the stage on Saturday in Nice which I guess / derived from the available information ...

The Paris-Nice 2012 race route map

This time the information has become available at a point where ASO's supplier was almost ready with the integration in the website. Although the details of the stages (except for the number of kilometers which have been added to the titles of the stages above) are missing, the overview map of the race route is online and so are the stage profiles for some of the stages. Hereunder you'll find the race route map:image sources: illustration article : Thomas Vergouwen / velowire, com, Dampierre-en-Yvelines - Spedona, Saint-Rémy-lès-Chevreuse - Spedona, Mantes-la-Jolie - Tomtom24, Orléans - Micthev, Vierzon - Ville de Vierzon, Vassivière - Lac de Vassivière, Brive-la-Gaillarde - Jacques63, Rodez - Ville de Rodez, Onet-le-Château - Antoby, Mende - Sanguinez, Suze-la-Rousse - ville de Suze-la-Rousse, Sisteron - Manassas, Nice - Ville de Nice, Eze - Office de Tourisme d'Eze

door Thomas Vergouwen
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this publication is published in: Paris-Nice | Paris-Nice 2012

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