Stage 9 - Troyes to Troyes (199km) - Sunday, July 7
In 2022, Stage 4 the Tour de France Femmes raced over the white gravel roads of the Champagne region of northeastern France. Now the men get their turn on Stage 9 of the 2024 Tour de France, with 32km of white gravel roads on tap during a 199km stage that starts and finishes in Troyes.
After hosting the start of the women’s stage back in 2022, this is the tenth time that the men’s Tour de France visits Troyes, the capital of the department of the Aube and home to andouillette, a French sausage made from pig intestines. We’ve tried it—it’s an acquired taste.
Upon leaving the city, the stage heads east through the Orient Forest–a regional park that’s home to the three man-made lakes–and then begins winding through the champagne vineyards that produce the region’s more famous—and more palatable—culinary speciality. It’s in these vineyards that the riders will encounter the 14 sectors of white gravel roads that make this one of the most anticipated stages of the 2024 Tour de France—and they arrive early, just a little more than an hour into the stage.
The organizers have given each sector a rating—from 1- to 3-stars—and luckily (for the riders) the race passes over most of the hardest 3-star sectors early in the stage. That means most teams will focus on setting a steady tempo and keeping their leaders safe near the front of the bunch–while a breakaway heads up the road and scoops up the points on the first two of the day’s three categorized climbs—the Category 4 Côte des Bergères and the Category 4 Côte de Baroville—and at the Intermediate Sprint in Fontette, 83.5km into the stage.
After their efforts on Stage 8 neither Norway’s Jonas Abrahamsen (Uno-X Mobility)—who wears the polka dot jersey as the leader of the Tour’s King of the Mountains competition—nor Eritrea’s Biniam Girmay (Intermarché-Wanty)—who wears the green jersey as the leader of the Tour’s Points competition—won’t have to worry about defending their leads in their respective competitions until after the Rest Day. (Although Girmay could continue to extend his advantage with a high finish at the end of Stage 9–which is a distinct possibility.)
After passing through Fontette, things should start to intensify in the peloton as the riders hoping to win the stage–and the Tour’s GC contenders–start thinking about positioning themselves for the second half of the stage–and the ten remaining sectors of gravel.
At this point the race will look more like a Spring Classic than a stage of the Tour de France, with accelerations leading into each sector as teams try and position their captains at the front of the bunch so that they can have a better view of the road ahead, respond quickly to attacks, and hopefully lose less time in the event of the flat tire or mechanical. This will turn the stage into a race of attrition as riders struggle to cope with the constant surges at the front–and back–of the bunch.
The final hour of the stage should be the most intense, as a final cluster of six gravel sectors begins just as the riders exit the Orient Forest after passing through it on their way back to Troyes. These sectors are all crammed into the final 33km and there’s not much asphalt in between them. There will be little time for riders to recover as they pass from one sector to the next, making the racing here some of the most exciting of the entire Tour.
The final two sectors are the longest in this final set of sectors. Both given 2-star ratings, Sectors 2 and 1 are 2.2km and 3km long respectively, with the final sector coming just 6.5km from the finish lines in Troyes. That makes them the perfect place for attacks from riders hoping to win the stage–or create gaps among the Tour’s GC contenders.
Luckily, the weather on Sunday is forecast to be much nicer than it was during Stage 8, with temperatures in the high-60s and partly cloudy skies. Rain would have made Stage 9 even more dangerous than it already is, and luckily the roads will be dry.
Riders to Watch
This is a stage that’s been modeled after Italy’s Strade Bianche, a one-day Classic in early March that gets its name from the long stretches of Tuscan strade bianche (“white gravel roads”) that make it one of the hardest races of the spring.
And it just so happens that the 2024 Tour de France peloton features several riders who have won recent editions of a race that many are starting to consider an event that’s on par with cycling’s five legendary Monuments.
The Netherlands’ Mathieu van der Poel (Alpecin-Deceuninck)—arguably the best Classics rider in the sport—won Strade Bianche in 2021 with a crushing attack on the final climb. The Dutchman was conspicuously absent at the end of Saturday’s Stage 8, a stage on which he could’ve provided a valuable lead-out to Belgium’s Jasper Philipsen—or perhaps win the race himself. Our guess is that the Dutchman was saving himself for Stage 9, where he’s the favorite to take a Tour de France stage win while wearing the rainbow jersey as the sport’s reigning world champion.
Great Britain’s Tom Pidcock (INEOS Grenadiers) won last year’s Strade Bianche with a stunning solo move that was helped by the fact that he is–like van der Poel–one of the world’s best cyclocross riders and mountain bikers. Despite coming to the Tour hoping for a high GC finish, the 24-year-old has already lost 18 minutes to Slovenia’s Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates) and could be given the freedom to race for the win on Stage 9.
And last but not least there’s Pogačar himself, who won Strade Bianche in 2022 and then again this year. His victory a few months ago was perhaps one of the most dominant of his career: attacking a little more than 50km from the finish line in Siena, the Slovenian simply rode away from the rest of the field after some impressive work from his team laid the foundation for his leg-breaking acceleration. If Pogačar delivers a similar performance on the white gravel roads of Stage 9, the 2024 Tour de France could be over before the first Rest Day.
How to Watch Stage 9 of the Tour de France
You can stream Stage 9 of the 2024 Tour de France on NBC’s Peacock ($5.99/month or $59.99/year). If you’re looking for ad-free coverage, you’ll need a subscription to Peacock Premium Plus, which runs $11.99 per month or $119.99 for the year.
With 32km of gravel roads, this is going to be one of the most exciting stages of the 2024 Tour de France. The stage begins at 7:15 a.m. EDT, and the riders should hit the first gravel sector at about 8:30 a.m. EDT. We’ll probably tune in to watch the first sector of the first official “gravel stage” in the history of the men’s Tour.
But if that’s too early for your Sunday, you can wait until that final “cluster” of six sectors that we mentioned earlier. The leaders–the peloton will likely have been blown apart by then–should hit the first of these final six sectors at about 11:15 a.m. EDT, with the stage expected to finish around 45 minutes later.
How to Watch Stage 9 of the Tour de France in the Canada
If you live in Canada, you can catch all the action on FloBikes. An annual subscription will cost you $29.99/month or $150/year.
How to Watch Stage 9 of the Tour de France in the U.K.
UK viewers can watch the Tour de France on ITV4, Eurosport, and Discovery+.
A standard Discovery+ subscription, featuring Eurosport’s cycling coverage, costs £6.99 monthly or £59.99 annually. The premium subscription, which includes all this plus TNT Sports, is available for an extra £29.99 per month.
Since getting hooked on pro cycling while watching Lance Armstrong win the 1993 U.S. Pro Championship in Philadelphia, longtime Bicycling contributor Whit Yost has raced on Belgian cobbles, helped build a European pro team, and piloted that team from Malaysia to Mont Ventoux as an assistant director sportif. These days, he lives with his wife and son in Pennsylvania, spending his days serving as an assistant middle school principal and his nights playing Dungeons & Dragons.
