In this press release we could read that the Argentinian minister of tourism, Enrique Meyer, and the general manager of ASO* (Amaury Sport Organisation, the organisor of the Tour de France) would have signed a letter of intent concerning a Tour de France stage in Argentina in 2011.
* they most probably meant Yann Le Moenner but his name doesn't appear in the press release
The press release than continued with quite contradictory information, indicating that this race would take place in October 2011 but also that this "stage" would take place before the main competition (the Tour de France) in Paris over a distance of 180 kilometers spread over 4 days (?!) in the central area of Argentina.
We could have thought that ASO decided to organise such a race after having discovered Argentina with the organisation of the two past editions of the Dakar which took place in this country and that a new race would be created, apparently -strange enough- by (ab)using the name Tour de France.
ASO's denial ...
I contacted ASO about this press release and the company indicates not being aware of this new race and that if it will be organised, this would be without the participation of ASO (and thus of course not with the name Tour de France).
If we take a look at the UCI America Tour cycling calendar we could also think that this race is not on the programme. However, that's not really true because, in contrast to the new UCI World Tour calendar, the America Tour calendar runs from 1 October till 30 September and if this race would see the light it would appear on this calendar only in September 2011. However, Amaury Sport Organisation's denial seems to be sufficient for me to say that the Tour de France won't come to Argentina in 2011 ...
For real information about the Tour de France 2011 and the latest rumours on the race route and the stage cities, I invite you to check the Tour de France 2011 category of my blog!
source map background of this article's illustration : Dexxter by Thomas Vergouwen
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Est-ce parce que l'Argentine est dans l'hémisphère sud que le 1er avril s'y déroule en octobre ??
| Nounours | thursday 07 October 2010 at 9:13:19
The southamerican country's name is ARGENTINA, not Argentinia.
| Julieta | thursday 21 October 2010 at 17:54:40
Thanks for noticing this Julieta! Strangely I wrote it correctly in the title but than probably did the rest of the translation too quickly which led to the introduction of this error. This has now been corrected!
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Two weeks ago the rumour about Tour de France coming to Argentina in 2011 rapidly flew around the Internet. This now all seems to be untrue ...
by Thomas Vergouwen over 
by barbote over