This year, the Tour de France will be held a week earlier, from June 29 to July 21. During this nearly month-long event, the best riders will once again compete over various climbs, sprint stages, and two time trials. In recent years, this battle has mainly been between two riders: Tadej Pogacar and Jonas Vingegaard. With a stronger field, including Primoz Roglic and Remco Evenepoel, we might see a four-way contest this year. Read all about it in this article.
Course
Due to the Olympic Games being held in Paris, there will be no finish in the French capital this year. Therefore, this year’s race will end in Nice, not on the Champs-Élysées. What remains the same, however, is that the Tour does not start in France. The starting signal will be given in Florence, Italy, and the participants will only enter France on the fourth day.
The first stage is immediately a tough one, with seven official climbs, it’s certainly not a flat ride. This stage will be high on the list for early escapees or fans of the Ardennes classics. The second stage is also mountainous but offers more opportunities for a rider like Mathieu van der Poel.
The sprinters can finally unleash on the third day, as the last climb is conquered 50 km from the finish line. Then we head to a flat finale, where there will likely be the first sprint finish. For these sprinters, it is important to score well here, as another mountain stage awaits them on the fourth day. Approximately halfway through this stage, the riders will enter France.
The next two stages, the last before the time trial, are again for the sprinters. On the first day, the riders leave the Alps via Chambéry and arrive in Saint-Vulbas. The lead group departs the second day in Mâcon and finishes in Dijon. In 2019, this was the stage where Thomas De Gendt arrived solo in Saint-Étienne. Stage 7 is a short time trial of about 25 km.
After another sprint stage, albeit with 5 categorized climbs, the first week ends with a transition stage over white roads near Troyes. On Monday, July 8, the riders have a rest day, followed by three sprint stages. Only stage 11 finishes uphill, while stage 14 sets the stage for a tough final week: 5 times the race finishes uphill. If the race is still undecided, a time trial will conclude this edition in Nice.
Favorites
The last person to win both the Giro and the Tour de France in the same year was Marco Pantani in 1998. This year, Tadej Pogacar might become his successor. The Slovenian has already won the Giro and is one of the top favorites for the Tour. In Italy, he had very little competition, taking the pink jersey in the second stage and winning six stages. In the final stage in Rome, he had almost ten minutes’ lead over Daniel Felipe Martinez.
Not only Pogacar performed well, but Jonas Vingegaard also did well in the early months of 2024. He won, among other things, Tirreno-Adriatico, but things went wrong in the Tour of the Basque Country. In the massive crash, he was one of the main victims, suffering a broken collarbone, seven broken ribs, a lung contusion, and a pneumothorax. This somewhat hindered his preparation for the Tour, but he is expected to reach a very high level. He is also the winner of the last two editions.
After a year of absence, Primoz Roglic returns to the Tour. In 2023, he won the Giro and finished third in the Vuelta, but now he is focusing entirely on the Tour de France. He is also doing this for a new team, having switched from Jumbo-Visma to BORA-hansgrohe. That team will be known as Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe starting from the Tour. Roglic already rode for that team in Paris-Nice but did not perform well there yet. However, he did win the opening time trial of the Tour of the Basque Country.
Roglic also participated in the Critérium du Dauphiné but dropped out on the final day. Remco Evenepoel did even worse in the same race: the climbs were particularly challenging for the then Belgian champion. Not the best results, but Evenepoel is probably still recovering from his crash in the Tour of the Basque Country, where he broke his collarbone and shoulder blade. He will need to quickly regain his form, but of course, he doesn’t need to be the best climber in the Tour. In the high mountains, he mainly needs to limit the damage and then strike in the time trials.
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