Tour de France 2023 - 20th stage | Saturday, 22 July | Belfort - Le Markstein | 133.5 kilometres
Rolf Aldag's assessment of the 20th stage of the 2023 Tour de France: What are we waiting for now?
Today I see two challenges: Firstly, after the very tough climbing days in the Alps, the peloton had the sprinters and breakaway days. This can be mentally difficult for the classification riders. Will they still feel their "mountain leg" or perhaps see themselves already safe in Paris?
Those who are already looking forward to their nice position in Paris will be in danger today. The other is the danger of teams putting all their eggs in one basket in this last chance. You can't underestimate that. I remember the 1997 Tour, for example, how could you forget that? Back then we were also in the Vosges and our leader Jan Ullrich was wearing the yellow jersey. Jan had a cold before the 17th stage and the Festina-Lotus team around Richard Virenque was already far behind in the classification. The French riders skilfully positioned themselves at the front of the race, attacked - and Udo Bölts' famous line to "Ulle" followed: "Torture yourself, you bastard!"
Today's stage is short. After the descent from the Ballon d'Alsace, it offers a scenario for an attack with skilful team tactics. There are no valleys after kilometre 50. If an attacking team manages to isolate the leaders of the other teams on the climbs, things will get uncomfortable. From the Petit Ballon there is the last chance to attack on the classification until 2024.
Schedule, TV coverage & live stream of the 20th stage of the Tour de France 2023
- Neutral start: 13:30, sharp start 13:45
- Estimated arrival time: between 16:54 and 17:17
- TV broadcast: ARD - from 14:30, 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!
