Tour de France: The profile of the 5th stage

Here he is the famous time trial in the first week of the race! It arrives at the fifth stage of this 2021 edition, with a flat and 27 km long course. For the first time in this Tour, the riders will leave Brittany and will discover the Pays de la Loire and its department of Mayenne. Since 2008 and the stage around Cholet won by Kim Kirchen, a time trial had not been so long in the first week of the Tour. On the program for this time, a very flat course with only 40 meters of vertical drop in total, all on a safe route on the roads of Mayenne. The riders will start from Changé to reach the city of Laval, which will host a Tour stage for the second time after 1999 where Tom Steels won. This stage will take place in the Grande Métropole de Laval. The runners will follow the Mayenne river and pass over it during the first intermediate score, in the town of Saint-Jean-de-Mayenne, at the eighth kilometer. They will then continue to discover the surroundings by skirting the town of Louverné then return to the town of Bonchamp-lès-Laval to pass to the second intermediate point, at kilometer 17. Finally, they will start the last kilometers of the stage in the streets de Laval where they will finish their time in front of the Mayenne space in the north of the city.

Already gaps on the side of the favorites?

Such a long race against the clock will inevitably create gaps between the specialists and the less experienced in this discipline. Tadej Pogačar and Primoz Roglič (if he is recovering from his crash on Monday) could take a good lead over their direct competitors even before they have attacked the mountain stages. As always, it is the last of the general classification, Amund Jansen (BikeExchange) who will start first, from 12:15 p.m., while the yellow jersey Mathieu van der Poel (Alpecin-Fenix) will start last, at 4:50 p.m. It is not impossible that some runners will be embarrassed by the rain, depending on their starting time.