Tour de France Femmes 2025 - Stage 9: Lichtenberg's preview: Last chance for corrections
TOUR Online
· 03.08.2025
Stage 9 | Sunday, 3 August 2025 | Praz-sur-Arly - Châtel | 124.1 kilometres | 2925 vertical metres
Claudia Lichtenberg's assessment of stage 9
The winner of the 2025 Tour will probably be decided on the Col de la Madeleine. But a race is only ever decided on the last day. I don't know if the 9th stage offers the terrain to make it as dramatic as last year on the last day of the Tour. But the route does offer something to correct the time gaps. In my opinion, it's well planned that the most difficult climb, the Col de Joux-Plane, is halfway through the stage.
Maybe you can open up a small gap there, if you have a really bad day with a competitor, you can still make up a lot of time before the finish. And if the time gaps are still tight and everything is still close together at the end, then the steep ramp in Châtel offers a springboard at the end. When things get really tough, when someone is really cooked, sometimes a bridge is enough to make a difference. And it's much more than just a bridge that's built in at the end. It can really rattle again. However, if the overall classification is clear before the stage, it could be the best and perhaps only chance for a breakaway group to win - with breakaway riders who may already be half an hour behind in the classification.
Schedule, TV coverage & live stream of the 9th stage of the Tour de France Femmes 2025
- Neutral start: 15:20, sharp start 15:25
- Estimated arrival time: between 18:45 and 19:14
- TV broadcast: Eurosport 1 15:00-19:30
- Live stream: ARD-Mediathek, sportschau.de, Discovery Plus (for a fee)
TOUR expert Claudia Lichtenberg
She was one of the best tour specialists in German cycling - at a time when there was no Tour de France for women. Claudia Lichtenberg won the Giro d'Italia and the Tour de l'Aude in 2009 under her maiden name Häusler, the toughest stage races in women's cycling at the time. Alongside her job as a racing cyclist, she completed a degree in mechanical engineering. Today, the 39-year-old from Munich works as an engineer and, together with her husband Christian, comments on women's races on the Discovery+/Eurosport platforms.
