Paul Rouget, Media365: published on Tuesday July 2, 2024 at 12:08 p.m.
The 4th stage of the Tour de France will see the riders take the legendary Col du Galibier on Tuesday, where temperatures will be much lower than in Italy.
The Tour de France is coming… to France! After three first stages in Italy, two of which were won by the French team, Romain Bardet and Kévin Vauquelin, the Grande Boucle leaves the boot on Tuesday, with a start from Pignerol, in Piedmont, and a finish in Valloire. This 4th stage of 138 kilometers, the second shortest, excluding time trials, of this 2024 edition, will notably see the riders take the legendary Col du Galibier, an interminable climb of 23 km with an average gradient of 5.1%. “We’re going to go for the Galibier on the fourth day, it’s not common. But we had to cross the Alps to come back. It’s this kind of stage that forces the riders to be ready from the start of the Tour de France because you don’t climb to 2,600 meters like that,” Thierry Gouvenou, technical director of the Tour de France, told AFP.
“Not the hardest side”
A Galibier that will be climbed from its southern side, the least demanding. “It’s not the hardest side. It’s rather rolling, there are no steep gradients. Overall, the difficulties of the day are not insurmountable. But it’s still a lot of elevation gain in the end (3,600 m) and it remains a key moment in the Tour de France, especially with the somewhat disrupted preparation of some”, Gouvenou recalls. After having climbed the Galibier (2,642 meters above sea level), the second highest peak of this Grande Boucle behind the Cime de la Bonnette (2,802 meters), on the program for the 19th stage, the peloton will descend to Valloire for the finish. Where it should be better than at the Galibier. Because after stifling heat in Italy, the riders will experience a real thermal shock. The temperature is expected to be around 3 degrees at Galibier between 3pm and 6pm, when the race passes through, a summit which has been closed to the public in recent days due to snow.
