2017 Tour de France route challenges Team Sky's grip

Organisers of the Tour de France will look to crack Team Sky’s stranglehold on the event with a challenging course that rewards aggressive riding, race director Christian Prudhomme declared yesterday.

The 104th edition will visit all five of France’s mountain ranges for the first time in 25 years. The early climbs could limit opportunities for strong teams to dominate stages. Shorter, steep stages feature throughout the race as race organisers hope to make the race more dramatic and less controllable. Rival teams struggled to break the tempo dictated by Team Sky squad in the mountains in recent years, but may have more opportunity in 2017.

Prudhomme’s 2017 Tour course includes many challenging climbs, five of them making their first appearance on the Tour and many early in stages, which will start from Duesseldorf on July 1 and go through five countries before ending in Paris on July 23.