Although the route profile might give the impression that the whole day will be slightly downhill, the 150 kilometres with a good 2000 metres of altitude gain are really tough. After 60 kilometres, the Tour reaches its home country and leads the peloton over four more challenging climbs to the finish in Lorraine. The stage seems to be tailor-made for a breakaway group of non-classified riders, who could end up deciding the day's victory among themselves in an uphill sprint to the finish in Amneville.
My tip for the stage win: Liane Lippert
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 with UCI Pro status organised in Germany.
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.
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.