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Stage 1 | Saturday, 29 June | Florence - Rimini | 206 kilometres | 3600 vertical metres

Rolf Aldag's assessment of stage 1: Up and down, more difficult than ever

I've never experienced anything like this first stage. We are in Italy, we have the Giro feeling of the Tour de France - and above all we have an incredibly difficult stage. When you read that it goes from Florence to Rimini, you don't necessarily expect what's happening here today. There would certainly be much easier routes. When we rode the route with the team in the spring, we were very impressed. As always with the Tour de France, the start is hectic, then from Mercato Sarraceno it's relentless: it's up and down with no chance of making up any ground after the descents.

So I'm expecting a tough battle for positions to get over the crests at the front. Once the race starts, you're under a lot of stress here. A puncture, getting a bottle, all that can really cost you time here and, in case of doubt, ruin the Tour de France. Because the best riders and their teams won't be giving each other anything today, I reckon it will be a day for the classics contenders. At the very least, they will be looking to shake off their rivals at the slightest opportunity. Even if it's a flat finish, I'm not expecting a classic sprint, but rather a larger group. However, we should also keep an eye on those riders who are not aiming for the overall classification - but are instead focussing on the Olympics, such as Mathieu van der Poel. He has what it takes to make an impact on this stage alone.

Schedule, TV coverage & live stream of stage 1 of the Tour de France 2024

• Neutral start: 12:00, sharp start 12:40
• Estimated arrival time: between 17:34 and 18:05
• TV broadcast: ARD 15:50 - 17:55, Eurosport 1 11:45 - 17:45
• Live stream: ARD one, sportschau.de, GCN+, Discovery+, Eurosport
• All stages of the Tour de France 2024 at a glance
• All info on TV broadcast & live stream
• The start list
• The regulations

Stage 1 of the Tour de France 2024 in the live ticker

TOUR expert Rolf Aldag

As a racer with a great overview, Rolf Aldag was a bank for successful Tour teams and supported Bjarne Riis and Jan Ullrich in their victories in France. As a sports manager and sporting director, the Westphalian is also one of the most respected representatives in the industry. He is also planning the Tour de France mission again in 2024 with the newly named Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe team. As in previous years, Aldag has once again focussed exclusively on this year's tour for TOUR readers.

The 55-year-old has looked at the dramaturgy of the route planners and gone into detail to assess the possible course of the individual stages. In this work, he reflects on which constellations are likely in the race and which riders are likely to have particular hopes - or worries - on which stages. He also includes his view on innovations and trends in the business. In addition, Aldag provides a compact overview of the relevance of each stage for the classification. He assigns zero to three jerseys per classification: for the overall classification (yellow jersey), the points classification for the best sprinters (green jersey) and the Tour's mountain classification (dotted jersey). In this way, Rolf Aldag's forecast offers added value every day.

Further stage previews for the Tour de France 2024

• Stage 2
• 3rd stage
• Stage 4
• Stage 5
• Stage 6
• Stage 7
• Stage 8
• 9th stage
• Stage 10
• Stage 11
• Stage 12
• 13th stage
• 14th stage
• 15th stage
• 16th stage
• 17th stage
• 18th stage

TOUR at the Tour de France: Exclusive live blog