Tour de France Femmes 2024 - Stage 4: First test of strength in the Ardennes

Schedule, TV coverage & live stream of stage 4 of the Tour de France Femmes 2024

• Wednesday, 14 August
• Valkenburg - Liège
• 122.7 kilometres, hilly
• Official start: 12:40
• Finish: ~ 15:49 - 16:10
• TV: ARD, from 14:10, Eurosport 1, from 13:30*
• Live stream: ARD Mediathek, sportschau.de, Discovery Plus (for a fee)
• All stages of the Tour de France Femmes at a glance

Lisa Brennauer's assessment of stage 4

After the predominantly flat stages of the first two days, a challenging hilly stage awaits the pro riders today. The course is reminiscent of a mixture of the one-day classics Amstel Gold Race and Liège-Bastogne-Liège. With its constant ups and downs, the course offers ideal conditions for riders with high explosiveness on short climbs.

As in the 2012 Road World Championships, the legendary 12.8-kilometre Cauberg, which is twelve per cent steep, must first be conquered. After crossing the border into Belgium, the climb to the Cote de la Roche aux Faucons 14 kilometres before the finish offers the opportunity for a final attack. On these 1.3 kilometres with an average gradient of eleven per cent, a "puncheuse" definitely has the chance to save a few seconds' lead to the finish in Liège.

Our expert and her daily forecast

Lisa Brennauer competed in the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift once during her active career. At the inaugural event in 2022, the Allgäu native finished 58th in the final standings in her last year as a professional racer. The former road world champion in the time trial and Olympic champion in the team pursuit has since switched sides. She is now the mother of a son and has been supporting the German Cycling Federation as national coach of the women's U23 category since 2023. She also works as a TV expert and sporting director of the Women's Cycling Grand Prix Stuttgart, which is now the largest international women's one-day race organised in Germany with UCI Pro status.

For TOUR, the 36-year-old analyses all the stages on the route from Rotterdam to the legendary Alpe d'Huez, which features on the Women's Tour route for the first time and sets the stage for the exciting finale. On which stages could there be a sprinters' festival? Where could a preliminary decision be made with a view to the overall standings? With the first foreign start and a detour to neighbouring Belgium, the Tour of France promises eight exciting and varied stages. As the most successful German cyclist in recent years, Brennauer provides insights into possible race scenarios and describes with great expertise what the riders can expect on their three-country tour through the Netherlands, Belgium and eastern France into the Alps just one day after the end of the Olympic Games in Paris. We also use the number of classification jerseys to assess the significance of the stage for the overall classification, the climber's jersey and the sprinter's jersey.

* Broadcast times are subject to change.

Live from Tour de France Femmes 2024

TOUR editor Sandra Schuberth will be there live at the start of this year's Tour de France Femmes before cycling back to Munich. Her bikepacking tour is being organised under the name Deutschland-Trail Gravel-Edition. If you want, you can accompany them for a while.