Key events
“Here in France (where I live) they are giving the Tour de France Femmes full coverage,” emails Jeremy Boyce. “Every minute of every stage televised, helicopters, cameras on bikes, star commentators (Laurent Jalabert and Tommy Voeckler brilliant as usual), the women are starting to get the support and recognition they deserve.”
Neither Discovery nor Eurosport have any live pictures until 12.30pm UK. A shame, because the start of today’s stage is bound to be spicy.
The riders – 144 of them after this morning’s three abandonments – have rolled out for the neutralised start.
Christina Schweinberger (Fenix-Deceuninck), Elise Chabbey (Canyon–SRAM) and Clara Emond (EF–Oatly–Cannondale) have all abandoned the race before stage four.
The time schedule on the official site states that the stage begins at 11.25 UK / 12.25 BST.
The TV schedule now states live coverage begins at 12.30 UK, so I’ll be relying on the official site updates until then.
Are you looking forward to this one?
Why not email me?
Here’s the lineup for today’s eight climbs. It promises to be a very hard day in the saddle:
Bemelerberg (category four)
Cauberg (category three)
Geulhemmerberg (category four)
Bemeleberg (category four)
Mont-Theux (category three)
Côte de la Redoute (category two)
Côte de Forges (category three)
Côte de la Roche-aux-Faucons (category two)
“I hope we can keep this up,” Lorena Wiebes told Eurosport yesterday, after her SD Worx–Protime teammate Demi Vollering won the individual time trial. On which note, today looks like it could be a tough one to control, as it combines some of the terrain from the Amstel Gold Race and Liège–Bastogne–Liège.
Preamble
Today’s stage begins in the Netherlands and finishes in Belgium, taking in some famous one-day Classics territory on the way. The area around Limburg and Valkenburg includes those rare things – significant hills within the Dutch border – before the race rolls south and into the northern reaches of Belgium.
There are eight categorised climbs on a very up-and-down route, 122km in length, with one intermediate sprint coming at Pepinster after 67.5km of racing. Three cat-fours, three cat-threes and two cat-twos are included in the day’s climbs and there will be plenty of riders hoping to get in a breakaway.
More on that to follow shortly, but for now, here is Jeremy Whittle’s report of Tuesday’s stages two and three, a road race and time trial combo in which the reigning champion, Demi Vollering, took a step towards back-to-back Tour de France Femmes titles:
Stage start time: 11.25am BST
