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Tour de France 2017 live stream: Time, TV schedule, and route for Stage 16

An innocuous-seeming flat finish leads off the Tour’s final week.

Jul 18, 2017, 10:25 AM UTC

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Coming out of the second rest day of the 2017 Tour de France, there’s a lot to be excited about. Four riders are within 30 seconds of the yellow jersey with two major Alps stages and a time trial still to go. There’s a good argument to be made that an artificially boring course has, likewise, artificially tightened the general classification, but I disagree. Fabio Aru, Romain Bardet, and Rigoberto Uran have been Chris Froome’s matches on the (admittedly) few steep climbs of the Tour, setting up a fascinating final week.

Stage 16 shouldn’t factor into the excitement. It’s a Jekyll/Hyde sort of stage that would have been a lot more fun in reverse. Instead, riders will tackle up-and-down terrain before settling into flat, sprint-stage mode for the final 60-ish kilometers. Then again, small time gaps have a tendency of making even innocuous stages matter (see: Saturday), so who’s to say that time won’t be stolen. Sit out at your own peril.

Stage 16 will begin at 7:40 a.m. ET in Le Puy-en-Velay, and run 165 kilometers to Romans-sur-Isère. The stage will be shown on NBCSN, NBCSports.com, and the NBC Sports app at 8 a.m. To catch the very start of the stage, you’ll need to subscribe to NBC Sports Gold, which handily includes live tracking and commentary in its package.

Tuesday will likely be won by the sprinters or a breakaway, depending on which half of the course factors most in the proceedings. The general classification contenders would no doubt prefer to save their legs before Wednesday’s showdown, but there are locations for crafty riders to get their digs in. If Peter Sagan were here, he’d be penciled in for the stage win, but alas.

There is one potential wrench:

Winds of nearly 20 miles per hour during the race could lead to everyone’s favorite cycling equalizer: Echelons. And if that’s the case, you’re really not going to want to miss the stage.

No, this isn’t the Tour for set pieces — there’s no Ventoux or Alpe d’Huez, for example. But it is establishing itself as pretty great in its own stupid way. Stage 16 may keep the theme.