Tour de France 2023 - 9th stage | Sunday, 9 July | Saint-Leonard-de-Noblat - Puy de Dome | 182.4 kilometres
Rolf Aldag's assessment of stage 9 of the 2023 Tour de France: A summit for the best
Everyone will be talking about the history of this mountain climb today, and the 9th stage of the 2023 Tour de France is also based on it. The first thing that struck me, however, is that the course as a whole is extremely energy-sapping. In the 150 kilometres before the turn-off to the start of the Puy de Dome, the riders have to cover 2600 metres in altitude, there are many changes of direction - and the roads through Limousin and Auvergne are anything but motorways.
With that in mind, the 9th stage of the 2023 Tour de France is not only historically significant. It will also certainly be in the sights of the competitors for the podium in Paris. The final four and a half kilometres of the climb up the volcano will feature constant double-digit gradients - averaging twelve per cent. After Clermont-Ferrand, where the rest day is scheduled for Monday, a demanding first part of the Puy de Dome begins, the summit of which cannot be reached by car. The way up is shared by an excursion railway and a narrow road for walkers.
Anyone who studies a little cycling history cannot avoid the 1964 duel between Jacques Anquetil and Raymond Poulidor on this mountain. Incidentally, it was Fausto Coppi who was the first to win a Tour de France stage here next to the Roman Temple of Mercury in 1952.
Schedule, TV coverage & live stream of stage 9 of the 2023 Tour de France
- Neutral start: 13:30, sharp start 13:45
- Estimated arrival time: between 18:05 and 18:33
- TV broadcast: ARD - from 14:00, Eurosport - from 13:20
- 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!
