14 DAY TRIAL // Traditionally, Le Tour de France starts with a prologue, which is a short-time trial mostly set in an urban area to increase its technical difficulty, and which is designed to give time trial specialists a chance to shine, while allowing the favorites to establish an early hierarchy before the big battles in the mountains.
In 2014, the organizers at the Amaury Sport Organisation (ASO from now on) have decided to keep the model used last year, which means that a normal stage will be used instead of a prologue, and the expectation is that the finale will be the first to see a battle between the top sprinters of the peloton.
In the real world, this mean that Mark Cavendish and Marcel Kittel will be the foremost candidates for a win, but the stage in Yorkshire, in the United Kingdom, is now a perfectly flat one.
There are three categorized climbs on the road, which means that teams will have to work hard to control the breakaway, the group of riders who will try to stay ahead all day and contest victory among themselves.
The final kilometers also have a slight uphill drag, which could mean that powerful sprinters have an advantage, and the fact that this is the first day of racing in Le Tour de France 2014 might also lead to some nerves, which in turn could lead to crashes and other problems.
In Pro Cycling Manager 2014, all the above concerns will be important, which means that my initial strategy is to try and get a man in the breakaway, to control it and maybe profit from the work of other teams, while keeping the bulk of the Trek Factory team as safe as possible.
Despite trying to get Jens Voigt in the breakaway of the day, I was unable to get a solid time difference and finally Riccardo Zoild ended up counterattacking and took all the mountain and the spring points on the course, before getting caught by the peloton with about 20 kilometers (12.42 miles) to go.
This means that the sprinter teams had a lot of time to organize themselves for the final run in.
I only linked my sprint train with about 8 km to go and launched a little late, but Nizzolo managed to take third as Sagan emerged the surprise victor.
Take a look at the first stage of the 2014 Tour de France recreated using PCM below.
