The Etape du Tour 2020, originally planned for July 6th, postponed a few weeks ago to September 6th, has now been put off till an undetermined date in July 2021.

There is a silver lining in all this – at least for us tour operators – and that is that the same parcours is being planned for next year. Right, for the first time ever (I imagine) the Etape du Tour will trace a stage from the previous year’s Tour de France. Of course this assumes that 2020’s TDF does go ahead…

This is a great solution that will make Nice (host city) pleased, as well as all the hotels, restaurants, etc. who were planning on sleeping and feeding 15,000 tired and hungry cyclists this year. Hopefully it satisfies the thousands of riders who will be coming to France to ride this event, too. Of course all registrations are now automatically shifted to 2021, or riders can take a voucher for another ASO event.

There are no dates, but we shouldn’t have to wait till the October TDF reveal like usual because there is no mystery surrounding the route this time around. Once they fix dates with Nice Metropole, I’d hope they would let us know. ‘Early July’ is what they state on their site.