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STAGE 12: GAILLAC -- CAP'DECOUVERTE

Published: Jul. 17, 2003

This 47km time trial probably rates a 5-out-of-10 on the degree of technical difficulty scale. The road surfaces are good. There is an early climb out of Gaillac to a plateau, followed by a sharp downhill and some technical turns through the town of Cordes (24km), and then comes a snaking 12km section up the Cérou valley to Monesties (39km). From here, the main climb rises 364 feet in about a mile, and the finish is into a park converted from an opencast coal mine, once the biggest in Europe.

7/18/2003 Start Time: 10:20:00am
7/18/2003 Estimated Finish Time: 5:17:00pm

HISTORY
The Tour’s first long time trial hasn’t been this late in the race since 1974, when the organizers included only one time trial, the day before the finish. They didn’t want to favor Eddy Merckx, who won his fifth Tour anyway that year. Merckx took the only TT that has been held in this area, in 1971, when he beat race leader Luis Ocaña by 11 seconds on a 16.3km circuit at Albi.