Stage 3 | Monday, 3 July | Amorebieta-Etxano - Bayonne | 187.4 kilometres
Rolf Aldag's assessment: Sprinter teams to the front
After two days for punchy protagonists and the classification riders, it's over the national border towards the finish in Bayonne. It's a real stage for candidates on green with an intermediate sprint and a fitting finale. The good thing is that the nervousness should have subsided over the past two days and many riders are now able to categorise themselves in sporting terms compared to the competition. This reduces the risk of crashes.
In Bayonne today, everything is geared towards a bunch sprint, even if a few nice climbs at the beginning before the border area create some nice pictures. Incidentally, in the early stages of the Tour de France, the French-Basque town of Bayonne was one of the traditional stage towns and marked the south-western limit of the national tour. At that time, the participants did not yet travel to neighbouring countries.
The finale on the way to Bayonne is not very technical, it goes over a large main road towards the finish. It is therefore a stage for the powerful sprinter teams, who will take control here and compete for their first chance of a stage win.
Schedule, TV coverage & live stream of stage 3 of the 2023 Tour de France
- Neutral start: 13:00, sharp start 13:15
- Estimated arrival time: between 17:19 and 17:43
- TV broadcast: ARD - 14:10 to 17:30, Eurosport - 13 to 17:30
- 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!
