Stage 5 | Wednesday, 5 July | Pau - Laruns | 162.7 kilometres
Rolf Aldag's assessment: Good chances for runaways
We are already well and truly in the mountains: the Col de Soudet is the first climb of the tour to be labelled HC - or "Hors Categorie". This 15-kilometre-long mountain is very irregular, often steep and has a rough road surface. The Pyrenees are famous for routes like this.
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With the two further climbs before the finish in Laruns, the stage is also well suited for a breakaway group, as they would have around 70 kilometres to build up a lead before the highest climb of the day - and then enough opportunities to keep the chasers at bay. There is also the question of who has an interest in controlling the breakaway today. That depends on who has taken the yellow jersey in the Basque Country. If a candidate for overall victory is on the bike in yellow, his team will hardly invest too much. If someone like Mathieu van der Poel is still wearing the maillot jaune, his interests could lead to a more exciting race constellation. The aim would of course be to keep yellow for another day.
However, we are still very early in the Tour, which is why a demanding stage is unlikely to result in fierce battles between the top favourites. That's why I think the chances of a winner from a reduced breakaway group are the highest.
Schedule, TV coverage & live stream of stage 5 of the 2023 Tour de France
- Neutral start: 13:05, sharp start 13:25
- Estimated arrival time: between 17:21 and 17:51
- TV broadcast: ARD - 14:10 to 17:40, Eurosport - 13 to 17:45
- 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 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!
