Extreme heat is forcing Tour de France organizers to shorten Sunday\u2019s ninth stage across central France after officials issued a health alert.<\/p>\n
In an extraordinary step, Tour organizers will cut 30km from the hilly route after authorities placed the Corr\u00e8ze region under its highest level red heatwave alert.<\/p>\n
The Tour\u2019s been broiling under extreme heat conditions since leaving Barcelona last week.<\/p>\n
Stage 8 winner Tim Merlier (Soudal Quick-Step) welcomed the decision.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s not a bad idea,\u201d Merlier said. \u201cWe are now one week of racing and it was always above 35 Celsius. It\u2019s definitely a fight to have water and drinks between the cars.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor me it\u2019s a good idea to shorten the stage. There are not a lot of things they can do. It\u2019s good for the organization to try something.\u201d<\/p>\n
With temperatures expected to hit 100 Fahrenheit in Sunday\u2019s stage, race officials will trim the route from Malemort to Ussel from 185.5km to 155.5km.<\/p>\n
Rather than following the original route, the peloton will leave Brive-la-Gaillarde via the D921 toward Lanteuil before rejoining the planned course with 147.8km remaining to the finish in Ussel.<\/p>\n
\u201cM\u00e9t\u00e9o-France has placed the department of Corr\u00e8ze on red alert due to an exceptionally intense heatwave,\u201d a statement read.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis decision has been made necessary by the exceptional weather conditions. It aims to ensure that the race can take place under conditions compatible with the red heatwave alert.\u201d<\/p>\n
Extreme heat has been at the center of the narrative of the 2026 Tour.<\/p>\n
This is not the first time that extreme heat has altered a race. The French national cycling championships were also shortened in late June.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/velo-cdn.outsideonline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/GettyImages-2284331617-1-scaled.jpg”] Andrew Hood Updated July 11, 2026 10:44AM Extreme heat is forcing Tour de France organizers to shorten Sunday\u2019s ninth stage across central France after officials issued a health alert. In an extraordinary step, Tour organizers will cut 30km from the hilly route after authorities placed the Corr\u00e8ze region under its highest level […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[226,71],"class_list":["post-2039034","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-crawlmanager","tag-velo-outsideonline-com"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2039034","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2039034"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2039034\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2039034"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2039034"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2039034"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}