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Bagnères-de-Luchon
187 km
Monday 19 July
This stage will run from Ariège to Haute-Garonne and from Pamiers, a Tour first, to Bagnères-de-Luchon. Under its former name of Luchon, the town was the finish of the very first stage through the Pyrenees in 1910, after notably crossing the Portet d’Aspet and Ares mountain passes. Additionally this year: the daunting spectre of the Port de Balès, climbed only once before in 2007.
• Stage town for the first time
• Population: 16,000
• Sub-prefecture of Ariège (09)
The Tour de France adores Ariège, having stopped off in no less than nine towns in the county during the course of its history. But if Ax-les-Thermes and Saint-Girons, located nearer to the Ariège mountain summits, are regulars on the Tour, the city of composer Gabriel Fauré has never before been visited by the Tour. This will change with the 2010 stage in Pamiers, the county’s most densely populated town.
• www.cg09.fr
• 50 times a stage town
• Population: 3,000
• County town of Haute-Garonne canton (31)
The Tour ventured into the Pyrenees for the first time exactly one hundred years ago with a victory in Luchon (now known as Bagnères-de-Luchon) for Octave Lapize, future winner in Paris. The race was never to be the same again and returned to the spa resort fifty times to sharpen attacks on the climbs that lie close by: Peyresourde on one side, Portillon on the other.
