Tour de France Femmes 2024 stage 5 preview - Punchy riders on alert for opportunities

Fenix-Deceuninck team 's Dutch rider Puck Pieterse (2L) and Team SD Worx - Protime's Dutch rider Demi Vollering (C) wearing the overall leader's yellow jersey (C) with the pack of riders (peloton) ride during the ascension of Cote de la Redoute in the 4th stage (out of 8) of the third edition of the Women's Tour de France cycling race, a 122.7 km between Valkenburg and Liege, on August 14, 2024. (Photo by JULIEN DE ROSA / AFP)

Contenders in the Tour de France Femmes will face 2,000 metres of climbing on stage 5 (Image credit: Julien De Rosa/AFP/Getty Images)

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Stage 5 climbs

Stage 5 of the Tour de France Femmes heads to French territory for the first time on this Grand Tour. Connecting Bastogne to Amnéville with 152.km, the route may be described as a flat day set up for sprinters, but the roads are truly not flat. The rolling terrain is dotted with five small, classified climbs that add up to 2,000 metres of elevation gain. There is just one intermediate sprint in Mercy-Le-Haut.

Demi Vollering (SD Worx-Protime) starts on Thursday in the maillot jaune, for a second day. Several riders made huge moves into Liège and are now pushing Vollering in the top five, include stage 4 winner Puck Pieterse (Fenix-Deceuninck) and breakaway companion Kasia Niewiadoma (Canyon-SRAM). Pieterse, the new mountains classification leader, is 22 seconds back and Niewiadoma is 34 seconds back. Two other riders are also under a minute from yellow, Kristen Faulkner (EF-Oatly-Cannondale) in fourth and Juliette Labous (DSM-Firmenich PostNL) in fifth.

The peloton rolls out from Belgium where the women’s pro peloton has started Liège-Bastogne-Liège since 2017. This year in addition to the Tour de France Femmes start, Bastogne also celebrates the 80th anniversary of the Battle of the Bulge from World War II. There’s no time for the riders to check out local history, however, as they set to carve out their own achievements before the big mountains on the weekend.

There is still relentless ups and downs to the intermediate sprint in Mercy-Le-Haut, which signals 19km to Côte de Briey (1.1km and 4.4%) and another 27.5km to the finish. But before the uphill finish, the Côte de Montois-la-Montagne (1.7 kilometres at 6%) looms, and offers bonus points at the top as well. The last 15 kilometres offer some descending, with no let up for a challenging final kilometre that begins with a 6% ramp and then finishes at 4% at the line in Amnéville.

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Tour de France Femmes 2024 stage 5 route profile(Image credit: ASO)

Jackie has been involved in professional sports for more than 30 years in news reporting, sports marketing and public relations. She founded Peloton Sports in 1998, a sports marketing and public relations agency, which managed projects for Tour de Georgia, Larry H. Miller Tour of Utah and USA Cycling. She also founded Bike Alpharetta Inc, a Georgia non-profit to promote safe cycling. She is proud to have worked in professional baseball for six years - from selling advertising to pulling the tarp for several minor league teams. She has climbed l'Alpe d'Huez three times (not fast). Her favorite road and gravel rides are around horse farms in north Georgia (USA) and around lavender fields in Provence (France), and some mtb rides in Park City, Utah (USA).