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Stage by stage
stage 18 - Blagnac 
Brive-la-Gaillarde
222.5 km
Friday 20 July
Brive-la-Gaillarde
222.5 km
Friday 20 July
Plain - A sporting perspective
Christian Prudhomme’s Analysis
The leaders of the general classification are advised to get their breath back, but it is unsure whether the teams of sprinters, who have not been able to express themselves for a long time, will let them have this luxury. The club of finishers capable of challenging Cavendish during a grouped confrontation is increasing: Brive appears to be a city that is there for the taking.
Blagnac
• Stage town on 6 previous occasions
• 23,000 inhabitants
• Head of the canton of Haute-Garonne (31)
The sprinters who are looking for a victory are advised to draw their inspiration from the local expertise in terms of speed as the city which accommodates Toulouse Airport is also the one which manufactures Airbus aircraft. The only two times that the Tour’s peloton has set off from Blagnac to leave the Pyrenees Mountains, it was the nevertheless the breakaway riders who had the last word. In 1984, Pierre-Henri Menthéour left Dominique Garde and Denmark’s Kim Andersen behind and won the stage in Rodez, where the peloton lagged almost 7 minutes behind. Three years later, Régis Cière took advantage of the stewards’ leniency, when he finished the stage in Blagnac having exceeded the time limit. The next day, he went to the extreme of inflicting a 14-minute lead on the peloton, during a solo breakaway which led him to victory in Millau.
• www.mairie-blagnac.fr
• www.midipyrenees.fr
• www.midipyrenees.fr
• www.grandtoulouse.org
Brive-la-Gaillarde
• Stage town on 9 previous occasion
• 50,600 inhabitants
• Subprefecture of Corrèze (19)
Above all, the finishes of the Tour de France relate the stories of sprinters, with the victories of Belgium’s Édouard Sels and Great Britain’s Barry Hoban or Mario Cipollini, the Italian playboy, when the race last went there in 1998. On the other hand, the stages which have started in Brive have lead to some outstanding confrontations between climbers, and in particular when they were heading for the Puy de Dôme. In 1973, Luis Ocaña made a point of finishing the stage first, although he had already won the race when he left Brive.
• www.brive.fr
• www.brive-tourisme.com
• www.agglo-brive.fr
• www.correze.fr
• www.region-limousin.fr