Stage 1: Rotterdam to La Haye (123 km)
Date: Monday, August 12, 2024
Streaming: 🇬🇧 🇪🇺 Discovery+/Eurosport; 🇺🇸 Peacock; 🇦🇺 SBS; 🇨🇦 FloBikes
Estimated finish time: 15:33 CET
Stage type: Flat
Summary: A chance for the fastest woman of the bunch to pull on the first yellow jersey.
A classic sprint stage will open this year’s Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift. Starting in Rotterdam and ending in The Hague, the stage is very flat with a total of 122 meters of elevation gain. Most of the stage is pretty technical, with a lot of changes of direction which will make the possibility of echelons minimal, but since it’s the Netherlands, never zero.
The final 270 meters of the race averages 1.6%, which sounds like nothing, but is still more challenging than a flat-as-flat-can-be finish.
There are a few technical sections during the stage, but as the race enters the final 40 km the women will need to have their eyes forward at all times. As they enter The Hague, with 30 km to go, there are a few sharp turns, and if the race has stayed together, with everyone fighting for a good position, it will be hectic as they enter the city.
In The Hague they do a city lap that includes some really technical turns, including around a city park, but once they’ve reached the final 5 km it’s basically a straight shot to the line, with only two turns remaining.
Because the final 40 km is so technical, it will be the most organized teams who are able to stay together and deliver their sprinter smoothly to the line.
My pick: Lorena Wiebes. It is impossible to look past the best sprinter in the world for a win on home soil at the biggest stage race on the calendar. She’s the hot pick for our Tour de Fantasy Femmes game.
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