Three Days in Corsica

Nope, not my holiday plans for 2012 but the Grand Depart of the 2013 Tour De France. I'm properly chuffed about this. If you've ever watched the Criterium International then you'll know what a cracking venue for cycling Corsica is.

The entire island seems to be made up of porous rock and spindly trees that give it a slightly more exotic look than will be offered by, say, next year's spin around Liege. Corsica isn't just good looking, either, it's lumpy. It's like ASO looked at the Vuelta's decision to have a summit finish on stage four of their 2011 event and decided to trump it by having the Tour break the 1000 metre ceiling with the Col de Vizzavona on only the second day.

Of course, there are no actual summit finishes in that first week, so its unlikely that the three day Corsican trip will do much to shake up the eventual GC, but with over 2000 metres of climbing on day two and just under 2000 metres on day three, we might well see a successful first week breakaway, something that's vanishingly rare these days.

Hey, remember when Claudio Chiappucci was in a breakaway on the second day of the 1990 Tour and ended up defending the Yellow Jersey for the best part of three weeks? Hmmm...