Stage 4 | Tuesday, 2 July | Pinerolo - Valloire | 139.6 kilometres | 3600 vertical metres
Rolf Aldag's assessment of stage 4: Early pressure for the top contenders
It's back to France, but there's still time to rummage through Italian cycling history. Fausto Coppi, the greatest of all Italian cycling heroes, secured a legendary stage win in the 1949 Giro d'Italia in the starting town of Pinerolo. Coppi also wrote himself into the history books on the high point of today's stage, the Col du Galibier, when he set off alone on his way to a stage win in the 1952 Tour de France. These two facts alone make it easy to recognise that this stage is unusually spectacular for such an early stage of the Tour.
On the fourth day, the riders are already heading into the high mountains, and over the first mountain in the HC category, i.e. "hors categorie". The Alps are on the programme at the beginning and also at the end of the Tour de France 2024 - but the route chosen this time will save the bunch a costly transfer. The favourites for the overall classification will put each other under pressure today, that's for sure. This is not only due to the demanding climb, but also to the descent to the finish in Valloire. There are almost 20 kilometres of steep downhill immediately after the pass with very difficult bends. You can hurt your opponents here, as Tom Pidcock did on his legendary ride in 2022. However, I don't know whether too much risk has been built into the programme with this approach to the finish. If something happens, then it becomes really dangerous.
Schedule, TV coverage & live stream of stage 4 of the Tour de France 2024
- Neutral start: 13:05, sharp start 13:15
- Estimated arrival time: between 17:05 and 17:37
- TV broadcast: ARD 14:10 - 17:30, Eurosport 1 12:45 - 17:15
- 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 4 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 the respective stage for which 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.
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