Tour de France 2024: Tour de France 2024: discover the profile and timetables of the third stage, designed for sprinters

La premi̬re ̩tape de plat dans le Tour. MAXPPP РGUILLAUME HORCAJUELO

La troisième étape du Tour de France lundi entre Plaisance et Turin, la plus longue de cette 111e édition (231 km), sera la première occasion pour les sprinteurs de s'illustrer après deux journées à souffrir.

'It's a long, flat stage, certainly a bit nagging, which offers an ideal scenario for sprinter teams. It's easy to control with beautiful roads", explains Thierry Gouvenou, the architect of the Tour.

"The first two days are extremely hard, it's a good start to the Tour de France but we must not go into excess either, adds -he. There we might get a little bored, but we had to get to Turin." The Belgian Jasper Philipsen, winner of the green jersey last year and the Briton Mark Cavendish, who is chasing the record for stage victories that he shares with Eddy Merckx (34) will be particularly scrutinized.

"Super large straight avenues"

But many other sprinters dream of expressing themselves, from the Dane Mads Pedersen to the Belgian Wout Van Aert, including the Irishman Sam Bennett, the Belgian Arnaud de Lie, the Dutchman Fabio Jakobsen, the Eritrean Biniam Girmay or the Frenchmen Arnaud Démare and Bryan Coquard.

Eight of the 21 stages on the programme for this 111th edition are likely to end in a mass sprint. “The finale in Turin is on super big, straight avenues”, underlines the technical director of the Tour.

“To try to lower the tension level a little“, the organizers are implementing for the first time the extension of the three-kilometer rule, which allows a rider who is the victim of a fall or an incident to be classified in the same time of the group where he was before being delayed, five kilometers from the finish.

Before the expected action sprinters, the peloton will pay a rolling tribute to Fausto Coppi by passing through Tortona, where the Campionissimo died in 1960.

Departure from Piacenza at 11:15 (actual at 11:35) arrival in Turin at 17:12 (time calculated on an average of 41 km/h)