Profile & map of the 19th stage (Friday, 22 July: Castelnau-Magnoac - Cahors - 188.3 kilometres)
Re-Live: This is how the 19th stage of the Tour de France went
Neutral start: 13:05
Official start: 13:10
Finish: ~17:16-17:39
Rolf Aldag's assessment: Last chance to escape
Watch out, attack! Normally you would expect a sprint on the flat section towards Cahors. However, there are powerful interests in the peloton that are not easy to keep an eye on. This is the last opportunity of the Tour de France 2022, to ride to the stage win with a breakaway group. Whether this is really realistic depends crucially on the remaining strength of the sprinter teams after the difficult mountain stages, but also on the overall situation in the battle for the green jersey.
Alone or with two teams, it is hardly possible to control the field here. This was also the case at the Tour's only arrival in Cahors. Back then, French champion Jacky Durand broke away with a breakaway group soon after the start in Bergerac and got rid of his rivals around ten kilometres before the finish. He had a 55-second lead at the finish. In Tour history, it was one of the greatest successes of the breakaway.
Both scenarios are similarly realistic, depending on the course of the Tour de France: either speedy breakaways like Matej Mohoric or Nils Politt fight for their place in the sporting annals. Or there will be a final sprint in the historic centre of Cahors. Incidentally, the boulevard sprint there is about three per cent uphill, which suits guys like Michael Matthews.
As a professional cyclist, our expert Rolf Aldag rode the Tour de France ten times up to 2004; as manager and sporting director, he has led various top teams through France and this year, for the first time, he will be in charge of the German team Bora-Hansgrohe as sporting director at the Tour de France. There are few people who can tell 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 difficulties 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.
TV broadcast & live stream of the 19th stage of the Tour de France 2022*
- ARD - Das Erste: 16:05 - 17:35
- Eurosport 1: 12:55 - 17:30
- More live pictures on ARD One, Sportschau.de and Eurosportplayer.com**
- You can also find all the important information here in our live ticker
The preview with Rolf Aldag of the stages of the 2022 Tour de France
This is how the stages of the 2022 Tour de France have gone so far
- The race report for stage 1
- The race report for stage 2
- The race report for stage 3
- The race report for stage 4
- The race report for stage 5
- The most spectacular pictures of stage 5
- The race report for stage 6
- The race report for stage 7
- The race report for stage 8
- The race report for stage 9
- The race report for stage 10
- The race report for the 11th stage
- The race report for the 12th stage
- The race report for the 13th stage
- The race report for stage 14
- The race report for the 15th stage
- The race report for the 16th stage
- The race report for the 17th stage
- The race report for the 18th stage
*Broadcast times subject to change; please note updates in teletext and on the Internet
**The Eurosport internet live stream is subject to a charge.
