Tour de France 2023 - 19th stage | Friday, 21 July | Morains-en-Montagne - Poligny | 172.8 kilometres
Rolf Aldag's assessment of the 19th stage of the 2023 Tour de France: Escape group or sprint?
When I look at the course, I can see the desire of the creators for a successful escape group. There are several undulations and changes of direction on the route through the beautiful, lake-filled landscape of the Jura.
However, I don't believe that the escape group will prevail today. The sprinters missed a chance yesterday, and today is the next opportunity. The differences lie in the details, and again they are considerable. On the one hand, the topography of the region is an invitation to quickly form a breakaway group, which can grow rapidly during the first phase of the race. If it grows to 20 men, the teams at the back have a difficult task. This is due to the many changes of direction that make it difficult to follow. Another detail in the finale is treacherous. Around 30 kilometres before the finish, the Cote d'Ivory is a third category climb where the peloton can break up.
Normally, the sprinter teams must be able to control the situation again and put their captains in the best possible position on the seven-kilometre finish.
Schedule, TV coverage & live stream of the 19th stage of the Tour de France 2023
- Neutral start: 13:15, sharp start 13:30
- Estimated arrival time: between 17:11 and 17:31
- TV broadcast: ARD - from 14:10, Eurosport - from 13:00
- Live stream: ARD one, sportschau.de, GCN+, Discovery+, Eurosport
Our expert Rolf Aldag
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 will once again be in charge of the German team Bora-Hansgrohe as sporting director at the Tour de France this year. There are few people who can tell so vividly what can happen on the stages of a grand tour and within the peloton. For TOUR, the 54-year-old sports manager has once again scrutinised the elevation profiles and march tables of 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: The more coloured jerseys our expert assigns to a stage, the greater their significance for the respective classification. The yellow jersey symbolises the weight of the 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. With these first-hand predictions, you can follow the TV broadcasts well informed and with profit!
