After seeing the Tour de France route presented in Paris earlier this week, defending champion Chris Froome expects and open and aggressive race next July.

"With only three summit finishes, I think that opens up the race to be very aggressive elsewhere. People won't wait until summit finishes to make their moves. There are certainly tough mountain stages that don't necessarily end uphill, so that'll lead to aggressive racing," Froome told a small group of reporters including Cyclingnews. "What racing on steeper climbs does lead to is being able to use your team a lot less. Drafting on 20 per cent climb isn't going to help you. You can see quite big time losses on steep climbs, as we've seen in the Vuelta. It leads to very exciting racing."

Froome says he is one of the riders who wont enjoy the lack of time trialling in the race, with just a 13km opener in Dusseldorf and then a 23km test on stage nineteen in Marseille.

"There's only one time trial at the end of 23 kilometres, and the prologue, so it's very light on time trial kilometres, and that will certainly make it more challenging for me," he said. "But that's the nature of the game. I'm going to have to go away and see how to get myself ready for a big battle."

The climb to La Planche des Belles Filles is included for the third time since 2012. In 2014, Nibali won but in 2012, it was Froome who took his first Tour de France stage win there.

"It's obviously a nice surprise to see La Planche des Belles Filles in there," he said. "And relatively early on, so hopefully the race will settle down and not be too dangerous too early on. Obviously for me La Planche des Belles Filles holds some pretty special memories, so I'm looking forward to that."