L'Etape du Tour 2022

Name: L'Etape du Tour 2022
Start: 10 Jul 2022 7:00am
End: 10 Jul 2022 7:00am

10 Jul 2022 - Briancon

The Etape will take place on Sunday 10 July 2022 in Briancon in the French Alps, and follow the route of stage 12 of the 2022 Tour de France.

Entries will open at 4pm (3pm UK time) on Monday 18 October 2021.

The return to the Alps means a farewell to the long-anticipated Nice edition of L'Etape, which was called off in 2020 and again this year because of the pandemic.

Instead, it's a return to something of a classic route with three iconic climbs: the Col du Galibier, Col de la Croix de Fer, and Alpe d'Huez.

The Alpe d'Huez has featured as a summit finish in three past editions of L'Etape, most recently in 2011 and before that in 2006 and 1995. It's also of course the finish for another classic sportive, La Marmotte Alps, which will take place the week before on 3 July 2022.

It was interesting to see the Marmotte organisers chose to launch entries for 2022 at 10:30am on 14 October - just as the live route reveal for this year's Tour de France began.

Whereas recent editions of the Marmotte and Etape have taken place on the same weekend, the one-week gap in 2022 raises the tantalising prospect of an epic double-header for any cyclists looking to pack two of Europe's toughest rides into one holiday.

And four days after the Etape, the pro peloton will arrive in Briancon to take on the same course in the Tour de France.

L'Etape du Tour - cycling's greatest sportive?

The Etape du Tour is probably the most famous sportive in the world, and is the only chance each year to ride the same route as the pro riders in the Tour de France on closed roads.

Each year around 16,000 lucky riders get the chance to ride a stage of the Tour de France just a few days before the professional riders cover the same route. Always run on one of the rest days of the Tour, the Etape du Tour has the same support cars and police outriders as the actual Tour.

The Etape du Tour is run by ASO, who also run the Tour de France, and the organisers tend to try and choose one of the shorter but mountaineous routes as their route.

Registration for the 2020 Etape du Tour opens at 4pm CEST (3pm UK time) on 21 October 2019. You can pre-register to speed up your application on the day. Usually there is a huge rush of registrations on the first day - and in 2019, entries sold out within 5 hours of opening.

The Etape has become incredibly popular among British riders and in 2014 nearly half of all entrants were from the UK.

One of the hardest choices is to decide whether to go to the Etape as part of an organised group or whether to make your own arrangements. A good travel company may cost a bit more but it can make life an awful lot easier as they pick you up from the airport, organise getting to the start and being picked up from the finish and often have their own feed stations along the Etape route. Read our guide to Etape du Tour travel operators to see who we recommend.

However if you plan well in advance and are part of a group of riders you will save a lot of money making your own plans. Remember that it is very unlikely that you will want to cycle home an extra 30km after finishing the Etape so making sure you are able to get home easily is important.

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