The 2024 Tour de France begins on Saturday, June 29th, in Italy (nope, that’s not a typo) with one of the hardest opening stages we’ve seen in years: a 206-kilometre road race from Florence to Rimini that takes the riders through the heart of Apennine mountains. The winner will be the first rider in this year’s Tour to pull on the maillot jaune, the “yellow jersey” awarded to the Tour’s overall leader, the rider who sits atop the race’s General Classification.

Tour de France History

The Tour de France was first raced in 1903 when journalist (and former bike racer) Henri Desgrange organised the event to promote L’Auto-Vélo, a French sporting newspaper that he edited–and is known today as L’Equipe. The newspaper was actually printed on yellow paper, which fuels one of the narratives surrounding the origins of the maillot jaune. That year’s Tour covered 2,428 km spread over just six stages–the average stage length was about 405 km –and only 21 of the original 60 starters finished the inaugural event.

Despite the low number of finishers, the event was an overwhelming success, and the Tour has since become one of the largest sporting events in the world, an event for which teams with multi-million dollar budgets spend years trying to win. For the riders, just a single stage win or day in the yellow jersey is a career-defining achievement. Riders who win the overall title–even just once–go down in history.

This year’s race covers 3,492 km spread over 21 stages, with eight days for the sprinters, two individual time trials, seven mountain stages, and about four stages for the punchy opportunists who head up the road in search of ‘do-or-die’ breakaway stage victories–we love those guys.

Here’s everything you need to know about the 2024 Tour de France:

The Route

A.S.O. Route of the 2024 Tour de France

The route of the 2024 Tour de France is unlike any we’ve ever seen, mainly because it’s bookended by two of the biggest “firsts” in the event’s 110-year history: it’s the first to begin in Italy and the first to end outside of Paris (in Nice).

The Tour begins in Florence on Saturday, June 29th, the first of three-and-a-half stages in Italy. And we’re expecting fireworks right away: Stages 1 and 2 are two of the toughest opening stages we’ve ever seen, even harder than the opening stages of last year’s Tour, which took place in the hilly Basque region of northern Spain.

After a day for the sprinters on Stage 3, Stage 4 begins in Pinerolo and brings the race back into France via the 2,642m Col du Galibier. The second-highest climb in this year’s race, the first rider to the summit will win a cash prize given each year in honour of Degrange. By the end of one of the earliest mountain stages in Tour history, the GC battle will be in full swing.

The sprinters will then get two more chances as the race heads north. But the GC battle will resume on Friday, July 5th, with Stage 7, the first of two individual time trials in this year’s Tour. The first week ends with Sunday’s Stage 9, an exciting stage featuring 14 sections of white gravel roads through France’s Champagne region. This will be the first gravel stage in the history of the men’s Tour de France–the women completed a gravel stage of their own through the region in 2022.

After the Tour’s first Rest Day, the race resumes on Tuesday, July 9th, and begins a southwesterly trip–through the Massif Central, which hosts a rugged finish to Stage 11–toward the Pyrenees. Along the way, the sprinters will have a few more opportunities to win a stage before the high mountains return over the weekend.

And they return in a big way, with back-to-back hors categorie (“beyond category”) summit finishes in the mountains that form the border between France and Spain. Saturday’s Stage 12 takes the riders over the Tourmalet–which Desgrange first thought was too hard for the Tour de France–and ends with a finish at the Pla d’Adet ski resort, while Sunday’s Stage 13 ends on the Plateau de Beille–after almost 198km of racing.

As if the mountains aren’t enough cause for excitement, it’s also a holiday weekend: Sunday is Bastille Day–July 14th–so expect the roads on both days to be packed with “festive” fans. By the end of the day, the list of riders capable of winning the 2024 Tour de France will be much shorter than it was a week prior.

The Tour’s third and final week takes the race back east, where an Alpine finale looms. In all, the riders will spend four days in the mountains during the third week, first in the high Alps–with summit finishes at the end of Stage 17 ( at Superdévoluy) and Stage 19 (at Isola 2000). And don’t snooze on Thursday’s Stage 18, a saw-toothed stage from Gap to Barcelonnette that’s filled with short, jagged climbs and could be the perfect place for an ambush–or a Hail Mary–before the final weekend.

But this year’s final weekend is not what we’ve come to expect from Tours of the past. With the Summer Olympics beginning in Paris just five days after the end of the race, this year’s Tour skips its traditional finish on the Champs Elysees and instead finishes in Nice–after the hardest final weekend we’ve seen in decades.

The weekend opens on Saturday, July 20th, with Stage 20, a short but intense stage through the maritime Alps featuring four categorized ascents, including a summit finish on the Category 1 Col de la Couillole.

And just in case that doesn’t settle things, Sunday’s Stage 21 certainly will, as–for the first time in 35 years–the Tour de France ends with an individual time trial. And it’s a hard one: a 33.7 km race against the clock that takes the riders over the Col d’Èze, a tough Category 2 ascent that always features in the final stage of March’s Paris-Nice, an 8-day stage race that Tour contenders often use to build form during the first part of their seasons.

The last time the Tour de France ended with an individual time trial, American Greg Lemond defeated France’s Laurent Fignon–who entered the day wearing the yellow jersey–to win the Tour by eight seconds.

And this year’s winner of Paris-Nice–which finished with a stage over the Col d’Èze–was American Matteo Jorgenson (Visma-Lease a Bike), a 24-year-old from Idaho who took the yellow jersey on that final stage. Jorgenson will be lining up at this year’s Tour; could history repeat itself? We can’t wait to find out.

What Happened Last Year

Denmark’s Jonas Vingegaard (Jumbo-Visma) won the 2023 Tour de France, defeating Slovenia’s Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates) to defend his title from 2022. The two champions engaged in a tense battle during the first two weeks of the race and entered the second Rest Day separated by just ten seconds on the Tour’s General Classification.

But Vingegaard exploded at the start of the third week, crushing Pogačar in an individual time trial on Stage 16 and then dropping him in the Alps on Stage 17. In just two stages, the Dane’s lead went from ten seconds to more than seven minutes. Pogačar saved face by winning Stage 20, but for the second year in a row, the winner of back-to-back Tours in 2020 and 2021 was forced to settle for second place–and the white jersey as the Tour’s Best Young Rider. Pogačar’s teammate, Great Britain’s Adam Yates–won Stage 1 and wore the Tour’s first yellow jersey–finished third overall.

Belgium’s Jasper Philipsen (Alpecin-Deceuninck) was without question the Tour’s best sprinter. The Belgian won four stages and ran away with the green jersey as the winner of the Tour’s Points Classification. Italy’s Giulio Ciccone (Lidl-Trek) won the polka dot jersey as the Tour’s King of the Mountains.

Riders to Watch

At this point in time, we’re waiting to hear if Vingegaard will even be starting this year’s Tour de France. (Update; he is!) The defending champion was one of several Tour favourites taken down in a massive crash at the Tour of the Basque Country in early April. The Dane spent twelve days in the hospital after breaking several bones and suffering a punctured lung in the fall and only resumed training a few weeks ago. Visma-Lease a Bike recently said he has a 50-50 chance of starting the race, but only will do so if the team feels he’s 100% ready to challenge for a third consecutive victory.

Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates)

The uncertainty surrounding Vingegaard’s participation makes Pogačar the top favourite. The Slovenian won back-to-back Tours in 2020 and 2021 and scored back-to-back second-place finishes behind the Dane in 2022 and 2023. He’s been training since winning six stages and the General Classification at the recent Giro d’Italia and looks on track to become the first rider since Italy’s Marco Pantani (in 1998) to win the Giro-Tour double.

Primož Roglič (BORA-hansgrohe) and Remco Evenepoel (Soudal–Quick-Step)

Vingegaard wasn’t the only Tour contender who went down in that terrible crash at the Tour of the Basque Country: Slovenia’s Primož Roglič–who was leading the race at the time–and Belgium’s Remco Evenepoel were victims as well, and both riders immediately abandoned the race. Roglič injured his knee–but suffered no major injuries–but Evenepoel needed surgery after breaking his clavicle and scapula.

Unlike Vingegaard, both riders were able to get back to training relatively quickly, and they both competed at the recent Critérium du Dauphiné. Roglič won two stages and the General Classification despite almost cracking at the end of the final stage. Evenepoel won the Dauphiné’s only individual time trial, but showed he still has some room to improve after fading in the mountains. He finished the race in seventh place overall.

Carlos Rodríguez (INEOS Grenadiers)

Rodríguez, who won a stage and finished fifth in last year’s Tour de France, won the final stage and finished fourth overall at the Dauphiné, the latest in a series of high-stage race finishes for the 23-year-old. He’ll likely be joining Colombia’s Egan Bernal (who won the Tour in 2019) and Great Britain’s Geraint Thomas (Who won the Tour in 2018) on the starting line in Florence to form one of the deepest eight-rider line-ups in this year’s race.

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