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A shot this morning of Remco Evenepoel’s TT bike for today’s stage. He’s due off at 1644 CET.
Evenepoel has some major GC aspirations as well of course, and Stephen Farrand has written all about what today means for Evenepoel, here:
Enter stage left, therefore, Remco Evenepoel, double World Time Trial Champion, winner of the same first week TT last year in the Tour and winner of the Critérium du Dauphiné time trial. The Soudal-QuickStep leader was already a top favourite and in the regrettable absence of Italian TT giant Filippo Ganna (Ineos Grenadiers), who crashed out in the very first day of the Tour, and leading Swiss specialist Stefan Bissegger (Decathlon AG2R Mondiale), who also exited the race after falling on stage 1, arguably even more so.
In stark contrast to the stage 13 mountain TT, with 600+ metres of elevation gain in 10 kilometres, this one has a whopping 200 metres of elevation gain over 33 kilometres, and that comparatively low count means this first-week test favours the TT specialists.
Here’s a map of the route, running northwesterly out of Caen into the Normandy countryside then looping back to the finish in the city.
For all the start-times, Cyclingnews has it in full here. There are 181 starters, the first 86 off at minute intervals (until 1430 CET), then the next 80 at 90 second intervals (until 1630), and the final 15 at 2 minute intervals.
The first rider down the start ramp will be Yevgeniy Fedorov (XDS-Astana) at 1305 CET. He’s the reigning Kazakhstan National TT Champion and multiple Eurasian TT Champion, winning the latter a mere four years in a row, so his time should be a good reference point, right from the start.
Hello and welcome to Cyclingnews live coverage of stage 5 of the Tour de France, the first setpiece GC battle of the 2025 race, in the shape of a 33 kilometre individual time trial in the northern city of Caen.