Tour De France 2017: Live-Stream Schedule, TV Info, Route for Tuesday's Stage 10
The peloton will start Stage 10 of the 2017 Tour de France with somewhat fresh legs after Monday's first rest day, and event organisers have been kind to the riders, as the ride toward Bergerac shouldn't be too challenging.
The Dordogne region is known as a holiday destination and for its wine―if the weather cooperates, the riders should be in for a more gentle day in one of France's finest provinces, ending in a bunch sprint.
Said sprint could throw up one or two surprises, with several top riders already bowing out of La Grande Boucle. Here's a look at the full route and stage profile, via CyclingnewsTV:
TV Info: Eurosport, ITV 4 (UK), NBC Sports (U.S.)
Live Stream: Eurosport website, ITV app, NBC Sports Live service
Preview
Sunday's stage took a major toll on the peloton, and not just among the favourites for the general classification. Much has been written about the crash of Richie Porte, but well after Rigoberto Uran won the sprint for the stage win, a large group failed to make the time cutoff.
In that group was none other than Arnaud Demare, France's best hope of winning the points classification this year. Letourdata compared his Stage 9 performance to that of Uran:
Demare became arguably the favourite to win the green jersey after Peter Sagan was controversially disqualified. Suddenly, neither is a contender, while Mark Cavendish was also forced to abandon, leaving the peloton relatively short on star sprinters.
Marcel Kittel has already won three stages, and he's now the favourite for the upcoming flat stages. He leads the points classification by more than 50 points, ahead of Michael Matthews and Andre Greipel, who should be his main competitor in bunch sprints.
Alexander Kristoff, Edvald Boasson Hagen and Nacer Bouhanni are all fine sprinters in their own right, but they lack the raw power of Kittel and Greipel, who have teams built around their sprinting prowess.
The latter was happy there was no racing on Monday:
There may be a couple of adventurous riders who try their luck on Tuesday with a long break, but the sprint teams won't have too many chances to shine going forward―don't expect them to let up on Stage 10.
Wednesday should also end in a sprint, before the peloton hits the Pyrenees.
