Profile & map of stage 1 (Friday, 1st July: Copenhagen - Copenhagen - 13.2 kilometre individual time trial)
Re-Live: How the 1st stage of the 2022 Tour de France went
Rolf Aldag's assessment: stress instead of sightseeing
The Tour de France starts and is visiting Scandinavia for the first time. You might think: nice sightseeing to kick things off in the cycling capital of Copenhagen, that'll get you in the mood. But this is no easy prologue. The effort for this day will be considerable for many teams and the stress has been adventurous for days. The riders will try to get to know the route as well as possible in the hustle and bustle of the city before the start.
The 13 kilometres through the centre of Copenhagen are flat, but fairly technical and too long to take it easy. If you want to achieve something in the Tour de France classification, you have to keep it pure, a top ten place is worth striving for for the good cyclists today. The strongest time trialists will be keen on the yellow jersey.
The hopes of the Danish fans will be pinned on Kasper Asgreen, who has been Denmark's best individual time trialist three times. His team Quick-Step Alpha Vinyl will have done everything in preparation to deliver a perfect time trial and celebrate a Dane as the wearer of the yellow jersey. It is also to be expected that the good time trialists among the sprinters will give their all. If they achieve a decent result in Copenhagen, they will have the chance to win the maillot jaune on one of the following days.
As a professional cyclist, our expert Rolf Aldag rode the Tour de France ten times up to 2004; as a manager and sports director, he has led various top teams through France and this year, for the first time, he will represent the German team Bora-Hansgrohe as head of sport at the Tour de France. There are few people who can tell you so vividly what can happen on the stages of a grand tour and within the peloton.
What weighting does the stage have for the individual rankings?
For TOUR the 53-year-old sports manager has once again carefully studied the elevation profiles and route tables for this year's Tour de France. In his predictions, he names the teams and riders he sees at the front on each day, assesses the difficulty of the routes and says where he expects attacks and from whom. Will there be a bunch sprint? Will a breakaway group make it to the finish?
Aldag also assesses for TOUR what role each stage plays for the classification jerseys (see above): The more coloured jerseys our expert assigns to a stage, the greater its significance for the respective classification. The yellow jersey symbolises the weight of the respective stage in the overall classification, the green jersey stands for the importance of the best sprinter in the points classification and the red dotted jersey for the mountain classification, i.e. for the best climber.
The start times of the riders in the individual time trial
Jeremy Lecroq will be the first rider to roll off the ramp in Copenhagen today at 16:00. The start will be at one-minute intervals, so that Marc Soler will be the last rider to take to the track at 18:55.
Defending champion Tadej Pogacar starts the race at 17:05, his biggest rival Primoz Roglic at 16:20. Filippo Ganna, top favourite for the stage win, starts at 17:03, directly ahead of Wout Van Aert (17:04).
TV broadcast & live stream: Stage 1 of the Tour de France 2022*
- ARD - Das Erste: 16:05 - 17:30
- Eurosport 1: 15:30 - 19:15
- More live pictures on ARD One, Sportschau.de and Eurosportplayer.com**
- You can also find all the important information here in our live ticker
All stages of the 2022 Tour de France in the TOUR preview with Rolf Aldag
*Broadcast times subject to change; please note updates in teletext and on the Internet
**The Eurosport internet live stream is subject to a charge.
